Inspiration, Boredom, and Innovation

Something I wrote the other night. I want to refine this, but let me know what you think.


The definition of inspiration is “the arousal of the mind to special unusual activity or creativity”. Boredom is quite the opposite: “an emotional state experienced during periods lacking activity or when individuals are uninterested in the activities presented to them”. If you think about it, inspiration is the result of understanding that life and the universe offers more questions than answers, and boredom is the result of thinking that life and the universe offers more answers than questions—that life is uninteresting. Those whom are inspired and/or open-minded seek answers to all the questions that they have and those whom are bored and/or close-mined cannot receive answers because they are not searching or open to receive them. Any answers that are the result of inspiration can be thought of as innovation.

So what is the definition of innovation? Innovation is “being or producing something like nothing done or experienced or created before”. The only way one may produce something “like nothing done or created before” is to ask questions since the answers, or innovations in which we’re looking for have not been discovered yet. Therefore in order for innovation to truly be discovered, one must be first be inspired to find it.

Much like attempting to escaping boredom, some can’t seem to discover inspiration. Inspiration is hard to pinpoint because it’s always the journey to innovation and you can’t define that in which you do not know yourself. Everyone experiences periods of boredom and/or the lack of inspiration and often times these are unpleasant ruts, but we must understand that we cannot achieve innovation without inspiration. Trying to do so would be like imagining a new species of monkey and searching for it for the rest of your life when it probably doesn’t exist! It’s a shot in the dark. You cannot think of your innovation, you must think of what it is not. You must ask questions and not know answers. If one believes that there are undiscovered species of monkey and thus embarks on a journey of inspiration, he or she will find that monkey eventually…what an innovation. As long as one isn’t bored and remains inspired and open-minded, one will eventually achieve innovations that were never previously conceived.

Our mind is like a forest with new species waiting to be discovered at anytime, but the unthinkable are impossible to discover if you don’t have periods of inspiration. Some may stumble upon answers when dry of inspiration, but inspiration is the only true promise to your answers and boredom and close-mindedness won’t allow anyone to innovate, ever.

So if the key to innovation is inspiration, what do you do if you are stuck in a rut? Let’s look at the definition of innovation again: “the arousal of the mind to special unusual activity or creativity”—the understanding that there will always be more questions than answers. In order to be inspired you must force yourself to learn something new.

If you want to be inspired, ask yourself what you DON’T know rather than what you DO know. This path of inspiration and full open-mindedness will lead to innovations beyond anything you’ve ever seen before. If you want to discover innovation, be inspired rather than bored and be completely open-minded to ensure that you realize the possibility of constant innovation.


[edit on 12-7-2009 by semidiablan]

I don't mean to be like, "Hey! Read this!"...just curious what people think :p

It sounds to me like you have described a very practical version of a Hindu trinity: creation (inspiration), sustainment or redemption (production), and destruction (boredom).



Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva.

Creator, Sustainer, Destroyer.

Yet there are a few shrines dedicated to Brahma. He is worshipped and invoked particularly by scientists and kings for generating more creative ideas to serve the world of men and matter. The rulers invoke the Lord in order to surrender their ego and produce plans and schemes to serve the nation. Similarly, the research scholars invoke creative inspiration and flashes of new thoughts revealing the secrets of nature.

Shiva is one of the gods of the Trinity. He is said to be the god of destruction. The other two gods are Brahma, the god of creation and Vishnu, the god of maintenance. The three gods represent the three fundamental powers of nature which are manifest in the world viz. creation, destruction and maintenance.

www.rudraksha-ratna.com...


Your idea, in its most abstract form, can be applied to just about anything. And in fact another teaching of Hinduism is that while everything is constantly changing, certain eternal forms are ever-present. You give a perfect example of this by rendering the trinity in such a way here yourself.


Finding inspiration is sometimes hard but always wonderful.

Interesting, thank you for your comment. I haven't really studied Hinduism very in-depth. Thanks for the link as well! I was trying to find out how to be inspired at all times, because I feel so healthy when I am inspired and I feel depressed when I'm not.

I feel like it would be the secret to life if one could be inspired at all times.

I need to disagree with a point you made. Inspiration is not the key to innovation. Necessity is the key to innovation. If you need to do something, and there is no way to do it that is currently known, you will find a way to do it.

Most human beings are placated throughout their lives. They have food, shelter, companionship... there is no necessity besides going through their lives, day after day.

A need must be identified before anything can be innovated, otherwise why would someone bother? Once the need is identified, it will sometimes take inspiration to get to the end result, but we fall back to the original requirement: necessity.

reply to post by TLomon


Often when I realize something must be done, but I'm not sure how I am going to go about doing it, it sits on my mind until I am inspired by a solution, and then I go to work.

Maybe that's the first thing: we need a problem. A very pressing and urgent problem, that gives us no rest.

When I am bored I like to remember the fact that I really have no idea what in the hell is all around me. These molecules, atoms, string vibrations, whatever the current theory is, no one knows what in the hell we are doing here or what all this "stuff" is around us that seems so solid, or these feelings that seem so real to us. We are stumbling blind in darkness, like in a video game where no one ever explained the rules and we were left to figure everything out ourselves from the inside, but everyone is still just guessing. I find it a very urgent problem whose only solution is constantly seeking union with Everything, which is also very hard.