We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary

Host: The night had settled over the office district, the kind that hums even after hours — all glass and silence, punctuated by the faint buzz of fluorescent lights and the muted drone of machines that refuse to sleep. Through the panoramic windows, the city glowed like circuitry, pulsing with tired ambition.

Jack sat alone in a high-rise conference room, the table before him cluttered with design mockups, open laptops, and half-empty coffee cups — relics of a day that refused to end. His tie was loosened, his eyes sharp but hollow, the kind of look that belongs to a man who builds things but no longer knows why.

Jeeny entered quietly, barefoot, carrying two paper cups of coffee. Her long hair was tied back messily, and the sleeves of her white blouse were rolled up, ink and marker stains dotting her forearms like the tracks of thought itself.

Jeeny: “Edward de Bono once said, ‘We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.’”

Host: Her voice was calm, but it filled the room like a light turned on slowly. The words hovered in the air, echoing faintly against the glass and steel.

Jack: (smirking) “You and your quotes again. Sounds like something an academic says right before billing a fortune to tell people to think outside the box.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe it’s just the truth. We live inside boxes, Jack — mental ones, cultural ones, even emotional ones. Creativity’s the only thing that gets us out.”

Jack: (leans back) “Boxes keep things from falling apart. You start breaking too many walls, and soon you’re living in chaos.”

Jeeny: “No. You’re alive in chaos. You’re dead in comfort.”

Host: Her eyes locked on his, fierce yet soft. Outside, a thin mist had begun to settle over the glass — the city lights smudging like watercolor.

Jack: “So what, you want us to unlearn everything we’ve built? Experience gave us structure for a reason. It’s how we don’t burn our hands twice.”

Jeeny: “And it’s also how we stop reaching for the fire.”

Host: The air between them trembled, a quiet tension that carried something larger than disagreement — the friction of two philosophies grinding against the edge of fatigue.

Jack: “You talk like experience is a prison.”

Jeeny: “It is when you mistake it for truth.”

Jack: “Truth is what keeps the world from spinning out of control.”

Jeeny: “Truth is fluid, Jack. It moves with perception. Experience builds scaffolding, but creativity tears it down so something real can grow.”

Host: A pause. The clock on the wall ticked audibly, marking time that neither of them was keeping. Jack rubbed his forehead, his jaw tight.

Jack: “You sound like one of those design-thinking seminars — ‘fail fast, fail often.’ Funny how that slogan always comes from people who can afford failure.”

Jeeny: “You think creativity’s a luxury? Tell that to a refugee who builds a radio out of scrap metal to hear the outside world. Or to a child in a war zone who draws windows on the walls just to imagine light.”

Host: Her words landed like quiet thunder. Jack stared at her — not angry now, but unsettled. There was something raw in her conviction, something that shook the neat, logical order he’d spent years constructing around himself.

Jack: “That’s survival, not creativity.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. That is creativity — the purest kind. It’s what de Bono meant. The mind locks itself in patterns of habit, and creativity is how we escape them. It’s not about art — it’s about freedom.”

Host: The rain began to fall — softly at first, then heavier, streaking down the windows like veins of silver. The room filled with its rhythm, a strange comfort between them.

Jack: (quietly) “I used to paint, you know.”

Jeeny: (surprised) “You?”

Jack: “Yeah. Back in college. I stopped after my first job. Too many deadlines. Too much reality.”

Jeeny: “So what made you stop — fear or fatigue?”

Jack: “Practicality.”

Jeeny: “That’s just fear wearing a suit.”

Host: Her smile was small, but her eyes carried an understanding that made Jack look away. The neon lights outside reflected across his face, red and blue blending into something strangely human.

Jack: “You think creativity can survive in places like this? In boardrooms and budgets? The only color they care about is green.”

Jeeny: “Then paint with it. Creativity doesn’t die in structure; it suffocates when we pretend structure is the goal. Even here — especially here — it’s rebellion.”

Jack: “Rebellion gets you fired.”

Jeeny: “Or remembered.”

Host: The sound of the rain softened. The city, beneath the downpour, looked almost clean again — its edges blurred, its patterns broken. Jeeny walked toward the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and drew a simple line across it.

Jeeny: “You see this line?”

Jack: “Yeah.”

Jeeny: “It’s a timeline — your experience, your logic, your ‘temporary structure.’ Now watch.”

Host: She drew another line — this one curving away, looping upward like a question mark, crossing the first in unexpected symmetry.

Jeeny: “That’s creativity. Not erasing what came before — just refusing to end where you’re expected to.”

Jack: “So what are you saying — we should reinvent ourselves every time we hit a wall?”

Jeeny: “Yes. Or learn to see the wall as part of the painting.”

Host: The silence that followed wasn’t empty — it was thoughtful, alive. Jack looked at the lines she’d drawn, his reflection in the glass overlapping them like another layer of design.

Jack: (after a long pause) “You ever think maybe we create because we’re scared of staying still?”

Jeeny: “We create because stillness kills us faster than failure.”

Host: A flash of lightning illuminated the skyline. The city glowed momentarily in perfect detail — buildings, cranes, bridges — all temporary, all trembling with rain. Then darkness returned, softer now.

Jack: “You know, when you talk like that, you almost make me want to start painting again.”

Jeeny: (smiling) “Then start. Don’t wait for a better moment — there isn’t one. The structures that hold us are always temporary. That’s what de Bono meant. Creativity isn’t an escape; it’s the act of building new prisons with wider windows.”

Jack: “And when those windows close?”

Jeeny: “You break them again.”

Host: The rain slowed to a whisper. Somewhere below, the streets gleamed under the passing headlights, and the city — once rigid — seemed, for a heartbeat, fluid again.

Jeeny capped the marker, set it down, and turned to him. Her voice was softer now, the conviction giving way to something gentler.

Jeeny: “Maybe creativity isn’t about making new things, Jack. Maybe it’s about seeing the old things — differently.”

Jack: (quietly) “Maybe that’s the real rebellion.”

Host: He reached for one of the sketch pads on the table, flipping it open. The faint sound of graphite against paper filled the space — the rebirth of something long asleep. Jeeny watched, smiling faintly, as he began to draw — clumsy, uncertain, but alive.

Host: Outside, the storm lifted. The lights shimmered through the mist like new ideas breaking through old structures. And in that high glass tower — surrounded by walls that once felt permanent — two people began to build something freer, from the wreckage of what used to hold them.

Host: The city breathed again. Not through its buildings or its machines — but through the sound of creation returning to the human heart.