Happy Halloween: Is it scary to be an American?

There is nothing quite like waking up in one city, flying hundreds of miles, and then walking the streets of another later that day. The wild Chicago winds delayed but did not cancel my early Boston-bound flight so I found myself at Faneuil Hall Tuesday afternoon, surrounded by stunning fall foliage, curving streets and history everywhere around me. This new reality stimulated new insights, old college memories and hopeful thoughts for me, confirming that travel is indeed a creativity lubricant. During my few-day trip I facilitated a teambuilding program with an enthusiastic company, visited with old friends, and was a guest on a cable TV program called "Wake up your Magic." I buzzed with ideas and schemes.

But by doing a little reading, eavesdropping and now TV-watching back in Chicago, I am once again reminded of another pervasive reality--which is not optimistic, not conducive to new ideas. Just turn on your TV now in the week before an election and here is the voice of that reality: "Happy Halloween: It's scary to be an American." Here's one political ad example:

Now, creative thinkers are particularly adept at shifting among different realities, enabling them to see from different perspectives, flexibly consider possibilities, and shift their mindset to come up with new solutions. But the current "reality" that for too long has infected the American discourse and media--that these are scary times, and that extreme and often irrational views trump rational ones--blocks our creativity and squelches innovation and change. That's because fear and creativity are not compatible. The more afraid you are, the less ability you have to open to divergent ideas, consider new options and access your heart--all creative keystones.

We (meaning our predominant cultural conversation) appear to be stuck so deep--and constantly reinforced by media--in this particular "reality" of pessimism and fear that we can't honor other valid realities, like my time in Boston, which was great. It can be as scary to read rational commentary (I'll discuss the Time Magazine cover story on restoring the American Dream next time) as it is to watch Democrats and Republicans hurl fear-bombs in the current political campaigns on everyone's television. I wanted some relief so I read though my old college newspaper when I was on campus and found the same partisan and fear-inducing views parroted there. So it's everywhere. Right? America is in decline and we all should be afraid, right? Preachers are burning Korans and Obamacare is taking over our freedom.

Are we insane to ignore these threats or are we insane to listen to them?

This is the question that Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert (click on banners for more info) are addressing in this weekend's rally in D.C. Usually I'm on the side of crazy, as creativity is not possible without coming up with way-out-there ideas that some will call crazy. I am an advocate of letting our freak flags fly, engaging our individual and original passions as a birthright to being human. But right now we need more sanity. We need to stop reinforcing extreme views and irrational arguments--and subscribing to the "reality" that creative solutions are impossible in America right now. Stewart and Colbert will try their own creative take on shifting this reality, and I'm curious to see how they will attempt to pull it off.

I want to encourage you to take this Halloween opportunity to explore a different reality, to try on another identity for a little while --perhaps someone less crazy than our current politics is--to see where it leads.