Notes from a bitch – pondering being prepared to be wrong…

I ‘m going to continue a pondering of creativity I began this morning on my personal blog, AngryBlackBitch.com. This is inspired by a talk given at a TED Conference by Sir Ken Robinson and specifically by this quote of his…
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
I know that Ken (we’re not close, but I’m pretty sure we’d be best brunch buddies if he lived in St. Louis) isn’t the first person to come up with this idea…but he was the person exploring it when I needed to hear it being explored.
Shall we?
When I was seventeen years old I left my mother’s house.
My home life had deteriorated and my relationship with my mother had become the very definition of toxic. I was going to leave my mother’s house at the end of the school year no matter what…I was lucky to have the opportunity to leave and go to Simon’s Rock College (they keep changing the name, but I’m pretty sure it’s something along those line…um, oh yes…Bard College at Simon’s Rock…wink), which is an early college for students who want to skip the rest of high school and get their college on instead.
Simon’s Rock was more than a college to me. It was one of the first audaciously creative things I ever did…and it has made all the difference.
As I said, my relationship with my mother had become toxic. My older sister went away to college…and things only got worse.
Every time my mother lashed out at me verbally I felt as if a thousand pounds had been added to my shoulders.
Every time she mocked my ambitions I felt farther and farther away from achieving them.
But I had some amazing teachers who nurtured my spirit when I began to wilt. And I have the gift of a sister who believed in me and who understood exactly what I was going through.
As a matter of fact, it was my sister who gave me an application to Simon’s Rock College that she received in the mail. We both knew that things were going to get worse once she left home…and I was desperately exploring options and coming up with little to none. Then the application came…and my sister and I planned it all out. I took summer classes so that I could have enough credits to graduate a year early – if Simon’s Rock didn’t work out I would at least have a high school diploma. I kept that application hidden for over a year…then filled it out, collected recommendations from my teachers, had my test scores sent and waited.
By the time the acceptance letter came I was convinced I wasn’t going to get in…that I’d rolled the dice and lost, time for plan b whatever that was going to be.
But the letter did come and with it came admission to more than just college…I was accepted to a new path for my life.
I told my mother that I was going to skip the rest of high school and go to college the same way I told my teachers and friends…as a statement of fact and not a request.
She predicted failure.
I predicted success.
And that fall I arrived in Great Barrington Massachusetts with everything I owned packed into two suitcases.
Suffice it to say, it was the right move for me.
I emerged a year later stronger…emotionally, intellectually and physically.
I look back on the decision to apply and all that followed with a bit of awe.
That was so not like me until it was me.
Now it is so very like me that I can hardly recall when it wasn’t.
Sir Ken Robinson’s quote…”If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”…made me look back to my seventeenth year and recall how I reclaimed my life, my happiness and my future by taking a risk…
…by not being afraid to be wrong even though so much was riding on my being right, because so much was riding on it.
Whenever I find fear of making a mistake getting in the way of my doing a thing or writing about a certain topic, I remember that time…my seventeenth year…when I got out of the way of my own damn self and it made all the difference.
And then, not without fear but despite it, I proceed.
May you and yours have a very happy week of thankful remembrance…