“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.”

—Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

BusinessWeek authors Roger L. Martin and Jennifer Riel discuss “Innovation’s Accidental Enemies” in the January 14th issue. They say that leaders often demand proof that a new idea will work, thereby squashing innovation.

"Invention, my dear friends..."

Deductive and inductive reasoning are mainstream, leader-approved ways of brainstorming. With deduction, we utilize existing rules. When we use induction, we fashion a new rule from existing data. These standards, Martin and Riel point out, both use real-world, already-proven info to analyze potential ideas. “But for breakthroughs, there is no rule or pool of past data to provide certainty.” Fear of the unknown takes the lead and hampers creative juices and shuts down intoxicating what-if scenarios. (And if something failed in the past, that can nix any possibility for a second chance, even if the factors that led to its initial demise have reversed.)

The mentality of requiring hard evidence of past successes (for future ones) isn’t only a corporate problem; idea-busters tangle up personal endeavors too. If we get too wild, we may end up looking or feeling like an idiot, right? Yet, and here’s the painful truth: When we settle for what provides a modicum of safety on paper, sometimes we miss out on the magic that’s just beyond the margin.

To prevent security trumping innovation, the authors offer us a third option: abductive logic, aka “the logic of what could be.” They write, “To use abduction, we need to creatively assemble the disparate experiences and bits of data that seem relevant in order to make an inference—a logical leap—to the best possible conclusion.” This is a leap beyond standard “calculated risks.” Such magical could-be thinking allows more leeway in the boardroom—and at your kitchen table talking with family or friends about life matters.

And the outcome? “Asking what could be true—and jumping into the unknown—is critical to innovation. Nurturing the ideas that result, rather than killing them, can be the tricky part.” Leaping into foreign territory doesn’t mean we have to live there, or even stay overnight. Merely sitting down for an unrushed visit amid the wild and remote areas of our thoughts can produce amazing discoveries.

Are fears holding you back from trekking deeper into the unknown? Throw out your well-worn cranial processes, hitch your current thoughts to the logic of what could be…and see where your mind takes you. The destination might prove magical, maybe even miraculous. And to those of you who require things to add up neatly, percolate on this gem from Willy Wonka: “Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple.”

“Look at the faces of people whom you meet. Each one has an incredible story behind their face. A story that you could never fully fathom. Not only their own story, but the story of their ancestors. We all go back so far. And in the present moment, on this day, all the people you meet, all that life from generations and from so many places all over the world, flows together and meets you like a life-giving water if you only open your heart and drink….”

—Brother David Steindle-Rast

epiphany: noun, a divine manifestation; a sudden realization or revelation of the deeper essence or meaning of something.

(The Day of) Epiphany in the liturgical sense refers to the Wise Men visiting baby Jesus, denoted as January 6 on the calendar (the twelfth day of Christmas). Most western countries and Christians don’t celebrate, recognize, or even realize there is such a holy day. When we use the word, we usually mean it in an ah-ha moment of illumination or whole-picture deeper meaning. Ohhhh, now we get it.

Last year I declared Epiphany as the day I take down the Christmas decorations. In part because I don’t fully begin to slow down enough to absorb the tree and other items until after the frenzy of December 25 is past. It’s in the aftermath of the holidays that I truly appreciate the twinkling lights on the tree and elsewhere. And yeah, it’s in part due to delay; I don’t like taking apart what took so long to get in place. It’s anti-climactic, a bit too much labor, and a wee bit sad too. Goodbye, and back to the attic you go until after Thanksgiving. (And tree lights, could you guys manage not to stop working sometime between now and then? I never understand how working lights going up to the attic, carefully, come down, carefully, from the attic not working.) Declaring a certain day to dismantle everything and pairing it with a day of heightened meaning makes the work less work-like and more ceremonial.

But I want, no, I expect this year’s Day of Epiphany to be one that I acknowledge and feel in my faith and experience in the philosophical sense, too. I am searching for the divine in the ordinary. Not in a looking-for-Jesus-in-the-cereal-bowl sort of way (and not posting a photo on Facebook if I happen to see a likeness there). Not in a “Let’s elevate the everyday to the sacred” way either.

I want an electrifying epiphany that knocks the blinders off my eyes and opens up new realities that seem incomprehensible, unfathomable, impossible today. OK, yeah, that’s asking a lot, right? But what if that’s why we don’t manifest epiphanies of miracle proportion as often as we should (or ever)? We don’t ask for or expect better. We don’t believe. We’re skeptics and scoffers and scorners. We’ve stopped asking big-picture questions ’cause we never feel like we get that last, crucial puzzle piece that would make the big picture make sense. We try to quieten our intuition because we don’t trust we have what we need to listen and heed its advice. (Our intuition still whispers to us, and we choose to ignore it at our own peril.)

What if you went to bed tonight, expecting to have an epiphany when you wake up? What might you dream or God nudge in your heart that could open your eyes to new visions the next morning? And what if you realized that sometimes you have to make the journey for the epiphany to take place? After all, the Wise Men knew Jesus wouldn’t come to them; they made the trip to discover him. And they made the trip believing they would find the divine manifestation—why else would they have toted those heavy gifts all that way?

Here’s my challenge to you and me: Start believing in miracle-size epiphanies; sometimes they’ll just appear, literally or philosophically. And start seeking them—look for the star and dare to set out after it. In doing so, we may make and meet the most glorious discoveries this side of eternity.

“As you give back to the world, passion and purpose are infused with new meaning—and you literally wake up to a fundamentally changed reality. Your soul’s purpose shines through your work, your work creates a better world, and you build a lasting legacy of wealth in the truest sense of the word.”

—Brendon Burchard

I’m unplugging to breathe in all that the remaining days of this year promise, and I cheerfully challenge you to do the same to whatever degree you can. Thank you so much for sharing your time, your thoughts, and your friendship with me during the last six months. I look forward to more conversations next year. Many prayers for each one of you to have miraculous and magical holiday moments (that you recognize and cherish!) and a lovely, peace-filled Christmas and New Year (free of resolutions but overflowing with powerful intentions). See you in 2010!

“Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.”

—Oren Arnold

We’re only human, so we all need forgiveness. But what about pre-forgiveness? …

Christian tracts are always at my local post office. Sometimes they’re stacked in a neat little pile, as though someone shuffled and tapped them hard and even against the table, like a deck of cards. Other times one is standing up, as though an open-book pose will snag passers-by if they catch a word or phrase beaming out from the text.

An empty envelope had been left near such tracts, and the big blue stamp of “YOU’VE BEEN PRE-FORGIVEN OPEN TO FIND OUT HOW*” caught my eye. (Yep, it had the asterisk. Doesn’t every such claim?!) I stopped and took two steps backward to glance at the envelope again, maybe because I wondered if it were related to the Bible tracts or if the recipient had left it intentionally to draw more attention to them. But the envelope wasn’t promising eternal salvation—it was promising benefits via Nationwide Insurance. I know because my very own envelope, complete with letter, was waiting for me in my postal box.

“Dear Emily-Sarah, You’re pre-forgiven,” the letter starts. “[Y]ou can be forgiven before anything even happens.” They offer Accident Forgiveness (good on your first wreck), Minor Violation Forgiveness (for when the police officer doesn’t care how gorgeous you look when you zip by him at 85 mph), and Roadside Assistance. You can customize coverage to include only the features that fit into your lifestyle. The letter closes with “You can find forgiveness too.”

Customization is a great marketing tool, and it’s no surprise insurance is another industry hopping on the just-the-way-you-want-it boat. It’s smart. Pay for what you need/use, ditch the rest. Personalization prevails! (OK, let’s double up on the accident portion, just in case; I’ll forego the violation part—I have a really fetching smile.)

What made me take a second look (which is the point) is the tagline. But what captivates me the most is the message—not just Nationwide’s, but the intrinsic notion of “pre-forgiveness.” I think immediately of Jesus, God’s son who came to forgive us all, if only we believe; and then you are pre-forgiven for the bad stuff you’ll do, even post-salvation. My next thought is of that silly (100% bogus) saying “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” And the next? An acquaintance’s liberal use of “It’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”

“After all these years of searching, I realize that what was calling me now was the same thing that was calling me as a child. I could not capture it because it was already a part of me, an extension of myself. It was me, projected, like a shadow. Ask yourself what is calling you—and then answer.”

– Victoria Clarynn Welch

In honor of National Adoption Awareness Month, here’s a look at semantics on the subject. And if you’re wondering how this piece fits into a work/life legacy blog, the last paragraph is all-inclusive to humanity. Plus, almost everyone is touched at least indirectly by adoption, by knowing someone (who knows someone) who is affected by the adoption triad. (And it’s always a good reminder to know that language equals power, so we need to choose our words carefully.)

I’ve known I am adopted for almost as long as I’ve known my name. Saying “I’m adopted,” is easy for me. Thanks to my sweet and loving parents, I’ve always felt special, chosen, legitimate (’cause they told me I was special—and chosen). The few times I’ve questioned my “authenticity” or wondered if maybe I did have something to feel ashamed about came as a result of other people’s misperceptions or attitudes of adoption or adoptees.

My parents surely felt upset, or at least cheated when birth parents used to be referred to routinely as the “real” or “natural” parents. (As if “adoptive” parents are “fake” or “unnatural”?) Such language could be argued as semantics, but for me it goes deeper than that. Words are powerful symbols. A fellow adoptee said it best: “They are not my ‘adoptive’ parents; they’re my parents. … A parent is someone who is there when you need them, through the good and bad times. Giving birth to someone doesn’t make you a parent.” It’s not the use but overuse of qualifiers that threaten to understate or wrongly label our parent/child relationships.

When I was in elementary school, a girl asked me if I knew what a bastard was. She then shared that “illegitimate children are bastards.” I was more outraged than hurt, and ran to my dictionary when I got home. She had to be mistaken! A bastard was somebody mean, bad—a terrible, awful person. But staring back at me from my World Book Dictionary was bastard: 1. a child whose parents are not legally married to each other; illegitimate child. 2. figurative. anything inferior or not genuine, especially anything of bad or spurious origin. 3. slang. an especially unpleasant, disliked, and usually unscrupulous person. Actually, I didn’t get to number 3. Tears blurred my vision. It was the first time I ever questioned my sense of worth. Was I inferior? After all, that’s what the dictionary stated. (And of course this means I previously had heard and knew that I, by definition, was “illegitimate”; otherwise, I never would’ve made the associated leap to bastard.)

That scene took place years ago. Multiple family situations abound now, domestic and international adoption are more prevalent and less cloaked in secrecy, and people are more sensitve, right? Nope. People are more aware, but it seems as if many people are less tolerable. They’re definitely less diplomatic.

The girl in the above incident wasn’t trying to be cruel; she was just sharing a new curse word she’d learned. Fast forward: A co-worker at the newspaper where I worked early in my career, a editor who was supposed to be discerning “red flag” words (”illegitimate” was one; to be replaced by “out of wedlock”), made a crass statement about “illegitmate children, the little bastards.” This time I didn’t question my self-worth; I questioned him. But he was steadfast in his opinion, regurgitating a belief he’d acquired. “But they are,” he repeated. “Illegitimate,” though less used now, remains on the forefront of some tongues and attitudes.

The old attitude and word seem to reignite when it’s budget time or a new research study comes out or politicians are enthralled in debates over welfare. That last one is especially tricky, when people dare to classify viable families from financially invalid ones, and then define children by their parentage. Completely apart from any intended message, what must be questioned is their language and underlying positions and beliefs. Forget about how thought-provoking direct messages or study results may be—the intent sometimes gets overshadowed and lost amid condescending, condemning language.

“Illegitimate” is much more than an unpleasant word. It carries with it a nasty, sour ring. And the people it affects the most are the children involved. Children have no say-so in their parentage, yet they are labeled with a negative, derogatory word that not only implies, but by definition (and often, a deeper opinion) says that they are “less than.” As soon as they are born, what should be every person’s birthright is voided, taken away: their title of genuineness. If “illegitimate” was just a word, it could be ignored. But the attitude that too often accompanies it hardens and narrows minds, and the resulting point of view can damage those children.

We probably can’t rid society of the word, but let’s at least put it in its proper place. Label the parents who abandon, abuse, ridicule their children. Surely people who viciously and purposely harm their offspring are not truly “legitimate” parents. Attach the stigma, the title, the word to them, not blameless children.

Each of us is a legitimate human being. We must ensure that all children receive in thought, word, and definition their innate and entitled blessing of complete authenticity.

Not content merely to change your language? Can you “Answer the Call” and give a child a loving family? There are currently about 129,000 children in foster care in the United States that would love a permanent place to call home—and someone to call Mom and Dad. Check out:

National Adoption Awareness Month

Child Welfare Information Gateway

Adoption.org