Greatest source of genius, creativity exists deep within yourself

I enjoy nothing more than walking into a gathering of peers whom I deeply respect. It's that feeling you get when you step into a party full of "the right people." There is an energy in the room you can feel immediately; sometimes you can almost see it. It is a feeling of potential, a feeling that the mundane limits we know do not apply to the space and time we have just entered. It is a congregation of energy, force and creativity that pushes at the edge of human experience.

I sometimes imagine what it must have been like to walk into one of the meetings Sigmund Freud hosted on Wednesday nights in his apartment at Berggasse 19 in Vienna starting in 1902, when he and his colleagues were laying the foundation for modern psychology. Imagine walking into that room in Vienna and seeing Freud, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung and other top physicians sitting in a circle getting ready to begin the night's meeting. Even Otto Rank, whose sole function in the meetings was to take minutes, went on to become a renowned psychologist. Imagine what discussion must have emerged from such a circle of minds, what ideas were broached, what possibilities lay ahead.

Raphael depicts his dream symposium in his painting "The Philosophy" (otherwise known as "School of Athens"). In this masterpiece, Plato and Aristotle stand side by side in a crowd in the center of a grand hall, clutching books they have written, while other groups, spread throughout the room, engage in study and debate. Socrates stands off to the left speaking with Alcibiades, a warrior, and Pythagoras, a founding father of geometry. At the foot of the steps on the right, Euclid is going through a proof of his geometry with a small group. Raphael is so enamored with this gathering of geniuses that he wishfully paints himself into the scene.

In hindsight, we all might wish to be a part of one of these now legendary groups, but who knew at the time which groups were full of nuts and which were the geniuses? Who knew that when Jack Kerouac walked up Columbus Avenue in San Francisco and turned into the City Lights bookstore to join Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs that they were giving birth to beat poetry? The apostles dropped everything they had to follow around a heretical, unemployed carpenter. The early Christians were so unpopular that they held their meetings in secret, marking their hiding place with designs of fish scrawled on the ground. It takes work and courage to sort through people and groups to recognize a seed of greatness forming.

So much of our time is spent chasing creativity and greatness after it has been formed. Weekend nights are spent bouncing from one party to another looking for "the action." These days everyone wants to work for Bill Gates, but just 15 years ago, few people wanted to associate with the computer geek and college dropout who was starting Microsoft. Of course, this never works because by the time you come upon a party or company that has reached some measure of success, you cannot reap the same benefits as those who were there from the start.

The solution to this problem of arriving too late was painted on the bridge over Campus Drive last year: "Seek the source." Look beneath the appearance of the people and events that dazzle you and find out where they are coming from and what motivates them. Who and what makes some parties so good? Why are some plays, concerts and other gatherings so successful and inspiring? If you follow the trail back from any of these displays of greatness you will come upon a small group of people desperately working to express an ideal or achieve a vision.

To be among such a group that can envision and create, you must seek the source of greatness one step further back: yourself. You have to ask yourself what you are passionate about and what heights you can imagine. With this seed and some desire you will find the people who can share your vision, and that group will find the means to express its inspiration and those actions will be viewed with awe by outsiders and recorded as acts of greatness.

Whatever effort is needed to find or create your symposium is worth it.