Tradition is a powerful force (and not just in Broadway musicals).
It’s given us many great gifts including holidays, rituals, beliefs…
And punctuation.
However, tradition can also be a bit clingy. Or we are when it comes to it.
You see that a lot this time of year. People spend hours trying to remake their holiday experiences so they’re exactly the same as when they were kids. Tables must be set a certain way, gifts opened at a precise moment, the menu never wavers.
Which is why you often witness a clash of traditions when two families come together.
Just hang on…
We’re trying to capture that ephemeral, safe and comfortable feeling we had in the past. You know, nostalgia: the pain of coming home.
We associate that mild melancholia with an idealized perfection that never quite existed except in retrospect – in our minds.
I’m a sucker for it – just listen to the music on my iPod.
Now apply that sentiment to business and you can see how easy it is to go from innovation to status quo and its entrenched set of clichés: ‘Because that’s how we always do things’; ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.
We become so desperate to recreate past successes that we as we walk forward, we only gaze back.
Now I’m not saying we should abandon tradition completely. But come on, it’s time to loosen its grip. If all we do is replicate, that means we’re making the same mistakes over and over, too.
Don’t just copy out your life in full
So instead of working so hard on re-creation, let’s let the past act as a creative guide for fresh ideas and our imagination.
And while I don’t think I’ll ever give up all nostalgia, social media has taught me to replace re-creation with creation, the kind where I’m constantly testing, changing and learning to blend past and future in surprising new ways.
What do you think? Are you a creator or re-creator?
And with that, I’m signing off for the rest of the year…
But before I go, I’d like to thank all of you for checking in, reading the blog and all your comments. Hope to see you back here in 2014.
Happy holidays!
