Build Forward Good

We come to Westminster as students in many different K12 stages -- and whenever we leave, we are already a member of a community that is expected to be able to do more and do better than the norm.

Then, down the road, what can be said about us as alumni typically bears that out.

But what do we, individually, say about ourselves? What was, or still is, the way it has felt getting to where we got?

We especially attend to how we got it done -- to being makers and shakers, to the chance, the choice, and the process.

When it comes to creativity, it may seem like the stuff of philosophy to try to describe what separates instinct, inspiration, and necessity -- or maybe just lies between them.

Is creativity innate but coaxed outward?

Is it usually already spontaneously outward bound but hard to recognize without a defined need or a form?

Is it just the name of a way that is learned to use what we know?

Is it only possible to nurture it or can it really be taught?

These various questions about creativity may seem important only in the heat of a moment, with no one of them likely to call on a persistent truth invalidating the others.

But most of the time, it’s safe to say that creativity is a kind of energy looking for something to do. And for someone, what it does is “new”.

Why do we need the new? Of course, the easiest answer is because the old no longer gets the job done. We look for the new to create opportunity where there had been none; to create awareness where there had been little; and sometimes just to demonstrate that change is possible.

Against the challenge of overcoming COVID, this Issue of Wildcat is inspired by the saying, “the best way to predict the future is to make it.” We’ve said it before, but we wanted to survey it across different fields at a personal level and see what it really means.