Purpose – The creative force
My fascination of the universe started in my early childhood. As a young girl, I bought magazines about the universe and I watched Carl Sagan on television. But when time passed it became too mathematical and I was not able to share my fascination with others. And so, my hobby stopped, but I have always kept my interest for new insight and the unknown. While starting up my own company, I sometimes have time available and this is how I ended up watching Michio Kalu, a theoretical physicist with a gift to tell about his passion: theoretic physics. And yes! I could follow him quite well. What he was explaining started a chain of thoughts in my mind. And voilá… that is how this article came to be.
Michio Kalo tells us about the discovery from 1600 onwards of four forces that explain how the universe works. It concerns gravity (Newton), electromagnetism (Faraday/Maxwell) and the weak and strong nuclear force (Albert Einstein). It is these four forces that are at the basis of all technological advancements and applications and as such the development of our society from the industrial revolution to the internet. But even though these forces explain most of the workings of the universe, they do not explain everything.
Therefore, contemporary physicists are busy trying to find a fifth force that can explain the universe.
In the TV-series “The mind of the universe”, René Dijkgraaf, one of the most prominent Dutch physicists explains that science is limited to what we can observe and measure. Science cannot use imaginary models of future realities of creative expressions as in art. However, he emphasizes that imagination is very important to progress science as most new inventions can already be found in science fiction before they become reality.
Kalu’s description of the four forces made me remember my book, ”The creative force” that I wrote in 2011 while being at home with a knee injury. This gave me time to ask myself: “so what am I doing here”? With three children and a demanding job in a pretty competitive business environment I felt like the only thing I was doing was surviving. And I thought: is this really how it works?
Writing the book was the beginning of a journey in which I found meaning, it made me realise how humans grow because of their experiences, is makes them become stronger and it it becomes the basis of consciously creating their own reality. During this process experience teaches them that you can only create sustainably when you consider and take into account other people’s realities and priorities and the world around you. Others might accept it for a while if you don’t especially when you have power but certainly not for longer periods of time. For me therefore the creative force is the conscious human ability to create a sustainable reality.
The time at home and writing my book has been instrumental in my personal development. I investigated what I could improve about myself to be able to apply the creative force more effective in my life. At times, this proved to be difficult as for example the environment in which I worked used different triggers to get people moving. At the same time, I experienced that by using (big) data, objectifying, arranging and organizing I could contribute a lot to the business. I felt that I was adding value by enabling equality, clarity, order and space for people in the organizational design I made. For example, by applying appropriate governance, processes and frameworks. Doing this gave me energy to get out of bed every morning, also when things were looking less favourable. And right now, I continue to apply this experience and knowledge through my own company. From numerous conversations, it is has become clear to me that there is an issue with the creative force. People want to contribute. The question is: how do we make it work?