Growing Older Is Mandatory. Growing Up Is Entirely Optional.

I’m an adult. I have responsibilities, deadlines, bills to pay, and all the other wonderful things that supposedly qualify me as a grown-up.

But there’s still a seven-year-old hanging out in my mind.

She’s usually throwing concepts against the wall to see what sticks, making faces at the bad ones, and asking questions that occasionally make the adults uncomfortable.

She’s particularly fond of “What if?”

And I have absolutely no intention of asking her to leave.

Because somewhere along the road to becoming responsible adults, something rather unfortunate happens.

We stop playing.

Not all of us, thankfully. Some of us are still running around with a box of crayons, asking ridiculous questions and wondering what happens if we color outside the lines.

But enough people stop that I have to wonder:

Who decided imagination had an expiration date?

When did curiosity become childish? When did following instructions become more valuable than questioning them? And when did making a mistake become something to fear instead of something to explore?

I suspect it happens gradually.

One expectation at a time.

One correction. One promotion. One perfectly reasonable explanation of why something can’t be done.

Until eventually, we become very accomplished at doing exactly what’s expected.

And absolutely nothing unexpected.

Who Told You That You Weren’t an Artist?

Walk into a kindergarten classroom and ask how many children are artists.

Nearly every hand goes up.

Ask the same question a few years later.

Maybe two hands.

What happened?

Did all those children suddenly lose their imaginations? Did their fingers forget how to hold crayons? Did the artistic gene pack its little suitcase and leave sometime around third grade?

Of course not.

They were taught.

Somewhere along the way, someone told them their tree was the wrong color, their drawing wasn’t realistic, or the child sitting next to them was better.

They learned to compare rather than create.

And eventually, they stopped raising their hands.

Think about that for a moment.

We take a room full of children who believe they can create anything and gradually convince most of them they can’t.

Then we spend the rest of their lives telling them to think outside the box.

What box? You built it around them.

Congratulations on Your Promotion. Please Leave Your Imagination at the Door.

I’ve spent my career in advertising, and I’ve watched an interesting transformation happen to creative people.

A young art director comes into an agency with wild ideas, questionable experiments, and the wonderful ability to make everyone in the room say, “Wait… WHAT?”

Sometimes the idea is terrible.

Sometimes it’s brilliant.

And sometimes it’s terrible until someone asks the right question and discovers the brilliant idea hiding underneath.

That’s the fun part.

Then the art director becomes successful.

Awards. Bigger clients. Promotions. A better office. An impressive title on the business card.

And sometimes, something changes.

The person who once challenged every convention begins protecting the conventions that made them successful.

They stop experimenting and start repeating.

They know what the client likes. They know what the boss will approve. They know which formula worked last year.

So they use it again.

And again.

Eventually, the person who once invented something extraordinary becomes an expert at producing something perfectly ordinary.

Not because they’ve lost their talent.

Because they’ve become afraid of risking their success.

Success doesn’t always kill creativity. Sometimes the fear of losing success does.

Of course, some people climb the ladder without ever making a wave.

They learn early that agreeing with the boss is safer than challenging an idea. They become very good at saying the right things to the right people.

And eventually, some of them become the people everyone else is afraid to challenge.

Which brings me to one of my least favorite workplace species.

The Damn Breathers

You know them.

They arrive at work. They sit in their chairs. They attend meetings. They nod appropriately. They do exactly what’s expected.

And they breathe.

Eight hours of breathing, interrupted by lunch.

Now, before someone gets offended, I’m not talking about people who work hard at routine jobs or people who simply want to earn an honest living.

I’m talking about people who have stopped contributing thought.

Some never wanted to.

But I suspect others started with plenty of ideas and gradually learned to keep them to themselves.

After all, why suggest a better way of doing something when the boss has already decided how it should be done?

Why challenge a bad idea when everyone else is nodding?

Why rock the boat when keeping your head down gets you promoted?

And here’s the particularly ridiculous part.

Companies hire intelligent, talented people, then create environments where independent thinking is treated as insubordination.

They hire brains and reward breathing.

Then management holds a meeting to discuss why innovation has stalled.

Perhaps they should open a window.

My Favorite Mistakes

I’ve always had a rather affectionate relationship with mistakes.

Not every mistake, of course. Some are expensive, embarrassing, and best forgotten.

But some of my favorite creative discoveries began with something going wrong.

Take losing a file.

You’ve worked for hours. You’ve refined every detail. You’re nearly finished.

And then something happens.

The file is gone.

After you’ve exhausted the appropriate vocabulary, you start again.

But something interesting happens the second time.

You remember what worked. You remember what didn’t. You make different decisions. You stop being precious about choices you spent hours defending.

And sometimes the new version is better.

Much better.

Or perhaps something unexpected happens in production. An unusual crop. An accidental overlap. A color combination nobody intended.

The immediate reaction is to fix it.

But wait.

What if the mistake is more interesting than the original idea?

What if that accidental treatment becomes a new visual language?

What if something that wasn’t supposed to happen becomes the thing everyone wants to imitate?

That’s how experimentation works.

Not every accident is a discovery. Experience helps you recognize the difference.

But if you’re so concerned with following the formula that you immediately erase everything unexpected, how will you ever discover something new?

Every formula was once somebody’s experiment.

And I have a question.

Why are we so determined to follow formulas when we could be inventing new ones?

Preferably ones we can break later.

When Did Knowing Everything Become More Important Than Learning Something?

Children ask questions constantly.

Why?

What if?

How come?

What happens if I do this?

Sometimes the questions are exhausting. Sometimes they’re hilarious. And occasionally, they’re more intelligent than the answers adults give them.

But children aren’t embarrassed by not knowing something.

They want to find out.

Somewhere in adulthood, that changes.

We begin treating uncertainty as weakness.

Executives feel they must have answers. Experienced professionals feel they should already know. People with impressive titles become uncomfortable admitting they might be wrong.

And instead of asking questions, they make declarations.

Instead of exploring, they defend.

Instead of learning, they repeat.

Meanwhile, the seven-year-old in my head is sitting in the back of the room, wondering why nobody is asking the obvious question.

And probably making a face at the PowerPoint presentation.

If I already knew everything, what would I have left to discover?

And if I couldn’t discover anything, what on earth would I do for fun?

Growing Older Isn’t the Problem

Experience is a wonderful thing.

It teaches us lessons that no classroom, tutorial, or software program ever could.

It helps us recognize a good idea, rescue a bad one, and know when to throw the whole thing away and start over.

It teaches us that listening is often more valuable than talking.

And that having the authority to make a decision doesn’t automatically make it a good one.

Experience should make us more adventurous, not less.

It gives us the tools to take bigger creative risks because we understand what we’re working with.

But that only happens if we remember to keep asking questions.

The problem isn’t age.

It’s the moment we decide we’ve learned enough, achieved enough, or become important enough that we no longer need to wonder.

That’s when we begin shrinking.

Not physically.

Intellectually.

Creatively.

Personally.

And sometimes, without even noticing, we become the grown-up telling the child that trees aren’t purple.

Keep the Crayons

I still believe in purple trees.

I believe in ideas that sound ridiculous until someone figures out how to make them work.

I believe in mistakes worth keeping, questions worth asking, and the occasional spectacular failure that teaches us something no success ever could.

I believe a person can be responsible, experienced, and professional without becoming predictable.

And I believe the most dangerous thing we can do to a curious mind is convince it that curiosity is childish.

Because growing older isn’t what takes away our imagination.

Sometimes it’s the expectations we accept. Sometimes it’s the success we’re afraid to lose. Sometimes it’s the approval we’ve spent years trying to earn.

And sometimes we simply hand over our crayons because someone tells us we’re too old to play.

Not me.

That seven-year-old is still in there, tossing ideas against the wall, laughing at the ridiculous ones, and occasionally discovering something wonderful in the mess.

Growing older is mandatory. Growing up is entirely optional.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a purple tree to draw.

And the seven-year-old thinks it needs wings. 

And while I’m finding my broken purple crayon, does your seven-year-old want to come out and play?