In September or October of 2008 we were discussing “psychological creativity” in my Creativity & Innovation class. Psychological or “mundane ” creativity is when someone creates something that is new for them but may not be new historically.
Frank was attending my class that semester so that he could teach it while I was on sabbatical the next semester. After this discussion, he sent me pictures of bento lunches as an example of how normal individuals were being creative in the lunches they bring to work.
No brown bags for these people!
Not even the fallback of quirky lunchboxes for the more creative and individualistic of these individuals.
Bento lunches have taken the brown bag lunch to a whole new level.
I had put off posting this topic but its time has come! The interwebs are swarming with bento posts!
You can’t use StumbleUpon for more than a few links without finding bento pictures.
There are cute bentos:
There are beautifully artistic bentos
There are bento lunches for the computer geek
And for the gamers.
A creativity researcher of my acquaintance with severe and extensive food allergies started making herself bento lunches to make her limited menu more palatable and posted the results on Facebook.
Bento websites are proliferating.
Just Bento will show you how to make a bento style lunch out of most types of food
The LiveJournal community BentoLunch allows bento fans to share their bento experiments.
Bento Box is one bento fan’s efforts to teach others about bento – what it is, its history, how to make it….
Even comic artists are commenting on the fad. The last few posts of the web comic “Real Life Comics” centers around bento lunches.
At the beginning of this post, I noted that the discussion of bento lunches arose out of a discussion about psychological creativity. I think the value of psychological creativity does not get the respect that it deserves. Even the names used to describe it (e.g., “mundane creativity” “small-c creativity”) denote something of less value than “Historical creativity” or “Big C creativity.”
A lot of people obtain great pleasure out of being creative in small ways in their life. True, a beautiful and creative bento box may not change the world, but if it brightens up our day and the days of those around us, it is something worthy of value and praise.
As stated by noted creativity researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihaly states in his book “Flow and the Psychology of Science and Invention”:
“Even though personal creativity may not lead to fame and fortune, is can do something that from the individual’s point of view is even more important: make day-to-day experience more vivid, more enjoyable, more rewarding. When we live creatively, boredom is banished and every moment holds the promise of a fresh discovery.”
