LIVING ABROAD GIVES YOU A CREATIVE EDGE
To check that they had not merely discovered that creative people are more likely to choose to live abroad, Dr Maddux and Dr Galinsky identified and measured personality traits, such as openness to new experiences, that are known to predict creativity. They then used statistical controls to filter out such factors. Even after that had been done, the statistical relationship between living abroad and creativity remained, indicating that it is something from the experience of living in foreign parts that helps foster creativity.
Merely travelling abroad, however, was not enough. You do have to live there. Packing your beach towel and suntan lotion will not, by itself, make you Hemingway.
A good friend of mine from KL sent me this clipping from this week’s The Economist..
Living Abroad gives you a creative Edge..
Are the Jews born cleverer than others? A question from the school days.. part of the same propaganda about jews controlling the world trade or the Chinese being the asian jews..
Learned men has taught me, no it is not that a race is superior to another in intelligence, but certainly certain cultural characteristics can make them adapt well to a fluctuant life, which has characterized the jewish people over the centuries.
Recently at the annual celebration of the remembrance of the our slaver in Egypt nearly 3500 years ago, an important part of the ceremony is when the YOUNGEST is allowed to ask four questions. So the idea of questioning is instilled and a logic and reasoning taught indirectly to the child.
When I was a student in Swedent, the rabbi in Stockholm told me, Curiosity is the sign of Intelligence and all the cultures which nurture questioning and curiosity to know other things will be able adapt well in this world and survive and succeed..
This is what I thought about when I read this article.. yes going to Club Med is not going to get your neurons ticking, but living in another culture, will make you curious about the ambience which is alien to you.. and I always remember what my favourite writer in english language has once mentioned, talking about the turbulence of the West Indies he had grown up in..Out of conflicts come out action..
Australians travel and many of them live abroad for a while, and the country is better off for it. Being an Expat is different from being an immigrant, since the emotional overlay and psychological feelings are different.
The best example are the group of Expats from India that I have met, in Kuala Lumpur, superb individuals, on par on an international intellectual forum anywhere in the world. What a difference between them and the immigrant Indians of a century ago, or the tourists from the various countries who come to gawk at the man made structures of KL..
I have always lived in more than one country at any time in my life, except the early dependent years and feel I am much better off for it.
Give it a try, live in another country which is not your own.. for a while…you will come out ahead..
{dedicated to Sharm, Abid, Brijesh and MunChing in KL, who was an expat in NYC}
