The Creativity Spark: Why We Need to Dream Bigger

The Middle-of-the-Night Muse

It was 3 a.m. in a dark Holiday Inn Express hotel room when I jolted awake, caught between dreaming and waking. The vivid images from my dream still lingered, as if waiting for me to notice them before they faded. I grabbed the pen and notebook on the nightstand and began furiously scribbling, trying to capture every fragment before it slipped away.

What emerged became the song "Dawn’s Crest"—not just a retelling of the dream, but a narrative built around it, my attempt to make sense of what my subconscious was trying to tell me (lyrics included at the end of this article). In those early hours, I wasn’t “thinking” in the usual sense. I was simply catching ideas as they floated past, half-formed but full of possibility.

That experience isn’t unique. In fact, scientists now have a name for that twilight state: hypnagogia, a space where logic loosens, imagination takes the wheel, and creative sparks often ignite. But hypnagogia is just one doorway into something much bigger: the remarkable, uniquely human ability to create.

Creativity: Humanity’s Superpower

If you think about it, creativity is why we’re here at all. Long before we built cities or wrote symphonies, we were imagining things that didn’t yet exist—tools, stories, futures—and turning them into reality. Creativity gave us language, culture, and problem-solving abilities that kept us alive when physically stronger species disappeared.

And it’s still our greatest hope. The challenges we face today... climate change, poverty, political division... aren’t just technical problems; they’re creative ones. We need new ways of thinking, new systems, and new stories to guide us forward.

Can Creativity Be Learned?

The good news? Creativity isn’t a mystical gift for the chosen few—it’s a skill, and like any skill, it can be strengthened. Neuroscientists have found that creative thinking lights up multiple regions of the brain, meaning it’s more like a network than a single “aha!” center. And networks can be trained. (See "The Science Behind Creativity", https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/04/cover-science-creativity)

A few ways to start:

• Capture your sparks – Keep a notebook (or phone recorder) by your bed, like I did with Dawn’s Crest. You’d be amazed how many ideas show up when you’re not fully awake.

• Change your environment – Shift perspective: new spaces, new conversations, even turning your desk to face a different direction can nudge the brain into novel patterns.

• Ask absurd questions – Play with “what if” scenarios daily. (What if birds designed our cities? What if meetings lasted 10 minutes max?) Playfulness often precedes breakthroughs.

• Embrace constraints – Rules and limits can force unexpected solutions. Haiku poetry, LEGO sets, and even the Wright brothers’ early gliders were born from tight constraints.

The Sparks That Changed Everything

Every major leap forward started as someone’s crazy idea:

• The Wright brothers watched birds and imagined flight.

• Einstein pictured himself riding a beam of light, leading to relativity.

• Mary Shelley woke from a vivid dream and gave us Frankenstein, sparking debates on science and ethics that are still relevant today - perhaps more than ever!

The common thread? They didn’t wait for permission to think differently.

The Takeaway—and What’s Next

If there’s one thing I’ve learned—both from science and from my own 3 a.m. scribblings—it’s this: creativity isn’t something we occasionally “do”; creativity is something we can live. And if we want to solve the biggest problems of our time, we’ll need to nurture it—not just in artists and inventors, but in everyone.

This is just the beginning. In the coming weeks, we’ll explore:

• How to train creativity like a muscle (practical exercises, including hypnagogia hacks).

• What evolution teaches us about why humans became the creative species.

• The boldest creative leaps in history—and what triggered them.

For now, maybe just keep a notebook by your bed tonight. You never know what spark might be waiting in the dark.

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Dawn’s Crest

Rod Morgan ©2015

Ne’er to move

Ne’er to breath

Cardboard and clay

Soulless earthen sleeve

Ne’re to move

Ne’er to be free

Trapped and alone

Painful memories

Of choices made

And future spawned

Do fitful sleep

While chasms yawned

Shards of glass

No angels weep

For this lost soul

That can’t find sleep

Beware the time

Be warned the flow

Of memories birthed

From seeds you sow

Go still the night

Weep no more

Of soft flicker light

Then silence roar

Ne’re to move

Ne’re to fly

Blind passion soar

On mountain high

Ne’re to move

Only to dream

Thirst quenched not

In silence scream

Yet each dawn’s crest

Life’s hope anew

Delight in abandon

Dark paths eschew

Unfettered, uncloaked

Weight no more

Rage the fire

Line cast ashore

Beware the time

Be warned the flow

Of memories birthed

From seeds you sow

Go still the night

Weep no more

Of soft flicker light

Then silence roar

Carry on, carry on sleepless night

Carry on, carry on hollow’s flight

Carry on, carry on lost child

Carry on, carry on lost child