Book 85 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title – Pain, Trauma, and Adversity is the Spark that Ignites Genius!

Book - The Geography of Genius: Lessons from the World's Most Creative Places by Eric Weiner

Book Description: In this “intellectual odyssey, traveler’s diary, and comic novel all rolled into one”, acclaimed travel writer Weiner sets out to examine the connection between our surroundings and our most innovative ideas. A “superb travel guide: funny, knowledgeable, and self-deprecating” (The Washington Post), he explores the history of places like Vienna of 1900, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, Song Dynasty Hangzhou, and Silicon Valley to show how certain urban settings are conducive to ingenuity. With his trademark insightful humor, this “big-hearted humanist” (The Wall Street Journal) walks the same paths as the geniuses who flourished in these settings to see if the spirit of what inspired figures like Socrates, Michelangelo, and Leonardo remains. In these places, Weiner asks, “What was in the air, and can we bottle it?”

Reflection:

After reading, throughly enjoying, and learning so much from 2 of Eric Weiner's other books, The Socrates Express and The Geography of Bliss, I couldn't wait to dive into this adventure with him again. I wasn't disappointed and I loved every minute of this journey as well. I learned so much, and 2 places Eric visits in this book, Edinburg and Vienna have now officially made it on to my bucket list destinations that I'd like to visit in my lifetime.

One of the biggest theme's that I kept seeing pop up time and time again no matter what where the author took us throughout time and history, was that the genius that flourished in those particular places followed painful and traumatic events that were thrust upon a population. It made me think that genius maybe is just a by-product that came out pain and trauma. I started to think about my own pain and trauma that I've experienced in the past few years, and how it has really been the spark that ignited my own personal Renaissance. I talk about this a lot in the second half of my book, I Can't Imagine, about how Emilia's death being the spark that changed my life and awakened me from my own mental and creative slumber as I searched for answers and rethought my life.

As the saying goes, pain always leaves a gift. The gift my pain left me was a purpose, values, and a mission to work toward for the rest of my life. I've creatively exploded in the past 2 years since Emilia's passing. I've become a creative machine that is fueled by the pain of losing my daughter and the purpose it left me with. I'd give it all back in a heartbeat if it meant I got to spend another day with her. I don't want this gift, but I'm embracing it for her.

Pain and trauma has a way of stripping down all the illusions in your life and bringing you crashing back down to nothingness and staring at a clean slate. We don't choose pain, but we can choose what to do with it. Some do nothing while suffering in silence. Others, choose to use that pain to try and change their life.

For me, pain drove me to question everything, to seek out new knowledge, to reignite my creativity as I started to sculpt a new life, and to ultimately find new way and innovate ways to look at this world. Now, I'm on a quest to find others that have experienced the same thing to unite our missions and purposes together. One person's pain can change a life, uniting with others that have experienced pain and suffering can change the world. I know they are out there and it is up for me to find them.

That is my new quest, to unite with others that have experienced pain and suffering and help each other on our missions. I hope this project and these reflections will be bat signal for them to find me in a lot of ways. If I can find them and find a way to collaborate around our new ideas, we just might find some new ways to change the world and turn our pain into a collective legacy.

That is what Eric Weiner detailed in his book The Geography of Genius, in my opinion. Places and regions in time that shared a collective pain in which people were able to unite around, ask new questions, challenge assumptions, and push the world forward in new ways that no one had previously imagined. Pain is always the first spark that ignites a creative revolution.

Question: How can you find others searching for answers to questions like yours?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - The Geography of Genius

YOML Bookstore - The Geography of Genius: Lessons from the World's Most Creative Places by Eric Weiner