Because What You’ve Got is A Lot.
Resourcefulness has been one of my life’s most-valuable ongoing lessons. In the face of challenges or obstacles it’s opened doors of consideration and practical ingenuity that would have otherwise remained shut. Curiously-enough, it’s had a more successful record at leading me to elegant solutions than the more desirable, resource-rich or “blue-sky” scenarios have.
In the face of challenges or obstacles it’s opened doors of consideration and practical ingenuity that would have otherwise remained shut.
As a child this most concretely showed up at play. While having grown up without the perceived latest and greatest toys, my parents did a great job of having fostered an environment where inventive play more than made up for what I thought was missing. Arts and crafts kept my siblings and I busy at making our own versions of the very toys we so greatly pined for. Instead of store-bought transforming toys we had balsa wood and pocket knives to fashion our own versions of transforming robots. And this was just the beginning.
When video-game consoles came around my brothers and I fashioned a hand-made version of what we called the “Pretendo.” This hand-made wooden, game system came complete with a controller, a scrolling screen and controllable characters. We glued a drawing of our favorite, mushroom-powered hero onto a penny that was attached to a line of thread which connected to a hand-carved, wooden controller. The thread was looped onto a rudimentary pulley system by way of tacks that were attached to the wooden base of the screen. The color-pencil, level graphics were illustrated along a wide, horizontal sheet of paper that served as our level. Gameplay and testing consisted of one of us slowly pulling the illustrated level while the player would tug on the controller to make our little sprite jump up and down throughout this hand-drawn world.
We later adopted this same mindset when we acquired a game-maker for our Commodore 64. We’d spend countless hours trying to recreate our favorite and original game concepts to our imagination’s delight. The best part was that some of the neighborhood kids would come over just to play the games we made instead of their more sophisticated NES ones. My parents were blown away by what we created.
What we were learning was how to turn our desire and frustration into something constructive. Something that satisfied our curiosity while putting to use what we had plenty of. In these early cases it was balsa wood, time, and our inspired imaginations. Without realizing it, we were practicing a habit that would continue serving us for years. The mindset was “If not this, then what else?” The point of frustration—or lack—was no longer the definitive answer, it was the starting point; a question left to be answered only by willingness and imagination.
To this day, this inventive habit still serves me well. In projects, business, writing and creative problem-solving in general, what I’ve found to be most useful are the constraints and parameters that necessarily lead to resourceful thinking. If I’m racked with certain impediments or a set of circumstances that otherwise feel limiting, I fall back on the same mindset: “Okay, if not this, then what else?” This leads me to more practical and immediate questions like: “What else can I do?”, What else can be done here?”, or “How can I work with what I’ve got to achieve X, Y, or Z?”
Ultimately, our folks ended up gifting us an NES. Sure, it was all that we had hoped it would be. Looking back, however, it simply wasn’t as cool or novel as our hand-made invention was, nor the habit behind it. The habit of fully using what’s available before seeking more. I call this a habit, but perhaps it’s more of an art, truly. Because learning when to intentionally apply resourceful thinking (and doing) to elegant effect can really yield some breath-taking results. The NES eventually arrived but the resourcefulness stayed.
—BiBiBi ;B