Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
–Albert Einstein
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.–Thomas Huxley
A couple of years ago, just after turning forty, my wife asked me what I would like for Christmas. Normally I stumble over such questions, but this year I knew exactly what I wanted: juggling balls.
“Like the kind you might see a little kid playing with?” she asked.
“Exactly,” I responded with all the enthusiasm of five-year-old sitting on Santa’s lap
“Okay,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders. I think she was just relieved that while my midlife crisis was decidedly juvenile in nature, at least it was an inexpensive crisis–no expensive convertible sports car or fancy big-screen plasma TV.
“Don’t you want to know why I want juggling balls?” I inquired.
She could see from the twinkle in my eye that I was dying to tell her, so to humor me she replied, “Why?”
“Because I just read an article that said that 95 percent of everything we have learned about the human brain we have learned in the just the past twenty years. Isn’t that extraordinary?”
Impatiently, she said, “I thought you were going to tell me why you wanted juggling balls for Christmas.”
“I was,” I replied, undaunted. “Beginning jugglers can increase the volume of their grey matter by more than 3 percent according to a study I just read.”
Continuing on in the expectation that this might not sufficiently impress her, I gushed, “Other studies have suggested that juggling may actually increase creativity by causing your brain neurons to fire in new ways.”
Figuring my head could probably use a little retooling, she granted me my Christmas wish, and for the better part of Christmas Eve I recused myself from my in-laws and practiced juggling.
The task started easily enough as I followed the directions, which told me to practice with just one ball until I had mastered tossing it in a perfect arc from one hand to the other. Having accomplished that within a minute, I next added a second ball to my repertoire, and not long afterward I was tossing two balls back and forth with the grace of an acrobat.
I was now ready to juggle, or so I thought. The task of adding the third ball was far more difficult than I had imagined. I finally had to give up Christmas Eve–actually it was 1:30 A.M. Christmas morning when my wife pleaded with me to come to bed because she knew our children would be waking in a few hours to see what Santa had delivered.
Neuroscientists have since offered me an explanation for my compulsive behavior that evening as well as the following day when I spent about as much time practicing my juggling as I did playing with my children. Some scientists speculate that when we attempt to learn something new, certain chemicals are released as our brain tries to establish new neural pathways. In the right doses, these chemicals can create a pleasurable sensation. These good feelings create a kind of positive feedback loop. (They also helped me persist in the face of hundreds of dropped balls.)
To this day, I can still recall the satisfaction I felt upon finally juggling the three balls with some consistency. Alas, almost as quickly as my own kids grew bored with their gifts, I, too, grew bored with juggling. I can and still do juggle on occasion, but it no longer provides that early feeling of euphoria. Part of the reason is that the neural pathways necessary to perform the task have now been wired, and there is no need for any chemicals to be released.
The point of this story is that the feeling of euphoria that accompanied my learning something new is analogous to what a young child feels on an almost daily basis as he or she is first experiencing and learning about the new world. Children, it has been estimated, begin their life with approximately 1 quadrillion synaptic connections, but as they adjust to their environment–and learn what is and isn’t useful, practical, and important—they lose up to 20 billion synaptic connections a day.
The good news is that this neural plasticity does not just disappear in adults. It can be revived and reactivated, but it requires mental exercise–such as I was doing when I was learning to juggle. Therefore, this chapter is entitled the “The Power of Play,” and it is all about revitalizing the connections that were so necessary for learning as young children because life in the exponential economy will require an extraordinary amount of new learning.
