Life does not move into a straight line. For some, this is not a profound statement, for others, this is an idea that needs to be considered, pondered, and explored because it is a new revelation. In elementary school children are shown various timelines of history that show the events of the world happening in a straight line. For myself, being a type-A personality, when I would come across a timeline that had offshoots of information that were outside of the linear model I wanted, I would get frustrated assuming what I was looking at was an inferior expression of the ordered events of the world. That may seem comical that I saw history in such a way, but for a structure-minded person, that is how I saw the world. In a nice, neat, straight line. As I have matured, the painful reality I have come to grips with is that life is messy and happens in a haphazard way that is unpredictable. This forced me to understand that even though God operates in an orderly fashion, what is orderly to him is not necessarily orderly to us.
In regards to innovation, there is greater myth worth dispelling throughout history than the idea that progress happens in a straight line (Berkun, 2010). Creativity and ideas are free-flowing reflections of the Creator (Gen. 1-2) and to try and restrict them to order is to kill off what they are innately created to be. For creativity and ideas to be orderly they would be subject to being formulaic and predictable, ceasing to be what they are and becoming something entirely different.
As a structured individual, I must embrace the reflection of my Creator and choose the seeming chaos of creativity to arrive at innovation and live the full life I have been created to live.
References
Berkun, S. (2010). The myths of innovation (1. updated and expanded pbk. ed). Beijing: O’Reilly.
