My fifteen year daughter wants to be a journalist - among other things of course - including filthy rich (she doesn't know how exactly but will come up with bizarre, witty and outlandish entrepreneurial ideas) and I do admire and feed her wandering, creative mind by passing on links to interesting and inspiring articles.
Thankfully on the journalistic front there are many female role models, ladies who have shown tremendous courage in their jobs, covered war zones, seen and reported how-it-is to the world, at times putting politicians and world-leaders to shame by the horror their ill
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| Yalda Hakim |
thought policies have havoced. Some of these female correspondents are charismatic to boot and not hard to look up to professionally, +Christina Amanpur, +Lara Logan, Alex Crawford,+Kate Aide, +Zeina Badawi, +Yalda Hakim - any one of these ladies is a befitting role model for a 15 year old.
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| Zaina Badawi |
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| Alex Crawford |
Courage and creativity are two traits I do not want my children to ever loose sight of - courage to stand up for what they believe in and not become a passive voice in an even passive crowd, and being creative, which, if you think about it, needs courage because creativity requires breaking free from the mould, ditching the norm and exploring the unknown . I was thinking about this earlier on and both traits are innate in humans, younger children (pre- schoolers) have no problem saying 'no' and will do their own thing to the embarrassment of most parents who want them to have friends and fit in, but as they grow older, they are taught to fit in, go with the crowd and somehow along the way they loose the courage to say 'no' - that's why so many of our young people fall off the wayside, do drugs and all sorts because they lack courage to be their own person and the creativity to think and be different.
But what about being courageously creative in design? Indeed, if you look around - or do a google search- you will find a lot of bold designs and creativity in architecture, interiors of shops, hotels - mostly commercial enterprises that can afford to spend money on being outlandish and stick out from the rest, but on the home front, it is still a daunting thought to many. It is least easy because invariably it involves spending money and creating things that don't exist in shops and also because our homes are such personal spaces and essentially extension of our personalities and it really does needs a very strong conviction to be original - And here I am not talking creativity as in having a bold wall colour, I mean all out crazy, in your face interiors - but that is exactly what
these homeowners have done - broken free from how-it-should-look to how-refreshingly-crazy-and-wonderful! Now, do you have what it takes to be courageously creative?
