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Creative thinking If This Be Genius...By Rick Horowitz One morning long ago in a land called Texas, a young man was walking along the banks of a river when he came upon a piece of driftwood that had washed ashore. It was a large piece of driftwood, and still damp from its time in the river. The young man walked slowly around the driftwood, and looked at it from every direction. He ran his hands carefully over every inch of it, over the rough parts as well as the smooth parts. Then he lifted the driftwood onto his shoulders and carried it home. The young man was named Karl, and he had ideas. "I'll bet I can make this piece of driftwood into something special," said Karl to himself. For months Karl labored over his piece of driftwood. He wiped it clean of the river mud until the grain showed through, straight and firm. He sanded down some of the jagged edges, while he left others just as they had been. (In the land called Texas, Karl understood, it was never good to look too polished.) With each passing day, his piece of driftwood looked less like an ordinary piece of wood, and more like a living, breathing human being
"That's nice work, Karl," the neighbors would say whenever they stopped by for a visit. "But what's the point?" Karl wouldn't answer. Instead, he'd simply smile his secret smile, as if to say, "You'll see." Until at last the day arrived when Karl called all his neighbors together and revealed his plan: He was going to make his piece of driftwood the governor of Texas. "Don't be silly!" said one. "Ridiculous!" said another. "Absurd!" said a third. But then the most extraordinary thing happened: He did it. Karl actually got his piece of driftwood elected governor of Texas - not once, but twice! Many of the neighbors were quite impressed with what Karl had accomplished. They started talking about him as a magician, even as some kind of genius. Others, though, simply harrumphed to one another, "What's the big deal? Any block of wood can be governor of Texas!" - which wasn't far from the truth. But what the harrumphers didn't know was that Karl wasn't finished. He wasn't satisfied with making his piece of driftwood the governor of Texas. He had even bigger ideas: He intended to make his piece of driftwood the president of the United States. If he could do that, then all the world - even the harrumphers - would know him for the genius he was, for the genius he'd always known he was. His amazing deeds would be written about in the annals of politics forever. But could he do it? Could he actually take his piece of driftwood and get it elected president? He could, and he did - not once, but twice! Doing it once might have been an accident, people said, but doing it twice? Surely here was genius the likes of which had never been seen before. His achievements were nothing short of miraculous, everyone agreed, and at seminars and on Sunday talk shows alike, Karl took his bows and accepted the plaudits. Who deserved them more than he did? Nobody. There was, of course, the small matter of governing - of war and peace, of raging flood and careful nuance. Putting a piece of driftwood in the Oval Office was one thing. Expecting it to do the job was something else again. Perhaps Karl wasn't such a genius after all. Posted 8/22/07. For
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Rick Horowitz
