Your alarm is ringing. The shower is running. Cars are speeding. People are passing. Your coffee is spilling. The meeting is starting. Your boss is waiting. The office is buzzing. Your husband is calling. Doors are slamming. Dinner is cooking. Wine is pouring. Sparks are flying. Seconds are passing. Minutes turn to hours. And hours to days. And days to weeks. And weeks to months. Time is passing. My head is spinning. And the game goes on.
But where were you in all of that? If I had to guess, my bet would be that you were the one spilling the coffee, running late to the office, racing home to cook dinner, drowning your day in wine, and trying to get to bed at a decent hour, all so that you could wake up five hours later to do it all again. Rinse, and repeat. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The majority of people that we encounter on a daily basis have become slaves to the world that society has built for us. Since elementary school, we have been confined by a set of rules that we are told we must follow in order to get ahead. If we don’t listen to the teacher in kindergarten, we don’t get to move on to first grade. And if we don’t follow the rules in first grade, we don’t go on to second. And so on, and so forth. But if we conform to the system and study hard enough, we may end up giving the valedictorian speech at our high school graduation, all while being showered in praise by the teachers, parents, and mentors who have guided us along the way.
The problem with grades is that they don’t follow us all the way through life. While a perfect grade point average in high school or college may make us feel like we are the best of the best, we are going to reach a point in our lives where convergent thinking is no longer rewarded. After university, the rules that have constrained us for the first twenty-two years of our lives no longer set the framework that dictates who succeeds and who fails. It is at this point in our lives that the game changes. Yet, too many people continue trying to play the same game that they grew up playing, as it is the only game that they know how to play.
When we walk out of the gates on our last day of university, it is no longer convergence, but rather divergence that distinguishes the few from the many. Given that the efficiency of society relies upon conformity, we are often not exposed to the type of divergent thinking that is required to succeed in the later stages of our lives. If schools were to teach us how to think divergently, we would start asking our teachers ‘why’ - and when brought to scale, this alone holds the potential to uproot the system in its entirety.
Over time, it becomes second nature for the majority of children and young adults to conform to the rules of the system. They get so caught up in trying to reach the top, that they lose the ability to seek out the blank space that exists beyond the world that they know. But for a select few, the idea of conforming eats away at us. From the time that we are little, curiosity drives our everyday actions as we strive to understand all of the layers of the world that we find ourselves in. This desire to use our minds as a tool for deeper exploration follows us all the way through college – and when we receive our diplomas and are finally set free, we are given the opportunity to play our own game, a game in which divergence is rewarded.
Rather than endorsing the conformity of society, the ability to think divergently gives us the opportunity to be the catalyst of change. We can see the world in a way that many others can’t – seeking out problems and building solutions to things that others did not even find to be problematic in the first place. We may walk and talk like the convergent thinkers that surround us, but we are constantly challenging the assumptions that build the foundation for the world that we find ourselves in. When set in the right context, the ability to think divergently is the most valuable skill in the world, as it gives us one thing that others don’t have – the ability to implement change. We are the ones who ensure the growth of the very society that constantly rejected us.
It is never too late to start thinking differently. Every one of us holds the power to use our imaginations as a tool to innovate – not only to change the world around us, but to change our own lives as well. Just as with learning any new skill, it is going to take time to train your mind and body to use divergence to your advantage. Your imagination is your greatest gift, and once you are able to let your inner curiosity run wild, you will have all of the tools necessary to design the world that used to only exist in your dreams.