I usually wake up at 5 AM every morning to begin my day, and I am often alone with the early morning noises that accompany a sunrise. I never tire of mornings. There is something optimistic about every one of them that I find endlessly enduring. Every start of a new day is a hope for something that was better than the day before. However, over the weekend I awoke to find my wife still up, not yet having gone to bed, baking and preparing for a mammoth day of celebration that occurred at my oldest daughter’s home—a celebration of my youngest daughter’s first born son paying tribute to his first birthday. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW THE DAY HE WAS BORN. My daughters created for our first grandson a complete conversion of their Liberty Twp home into a story book themed party inviting both sides of the family to a mythological exercise that will lay the path for static patterns lasting a lifetime. For the many birthdays that follow, my grandson will have this first one to launch him onto a lifelong quest of adventure, curiosity, and creativity.
In our family creativity is extremely important. I raised my girls on the idea of creative enterprise even when the world no longer values such things because the benefits extend well into more remote aspects of individual lives. As little girls my wife and I would allow them to convert the entire house into the concepts of their creative thoughts. My girls had access to the entire basement to create anything they wished any time they desired. If their creative enterprises took them into the late hours, we let them do it without restriction. This followed a tradition my mom started with me, allowing me to do much the same, only on a smaller scale. The belief was that the mind being active had value on a young person and that value would translate over into other aspects of their lives. It was certainly true for me. I did so much of it that many adults were deeply concerned when I arrived into my teenage years showing no desire for pop rock music, girls, or fashion of any kind. I didn’t care about school, or the people I knew there because I was more content to live within the world of my own making, than in sharing my space with others. The creativity that I had as a young person was the first foundation I had into self-reliance. When some of those adults decided that I needed to grown up, and took away all that creativity, I gave them a string of violent years in protest which really never went away.
For my children I never restricted them in manners of creativity. Over many years I have known many very affluent families in Indian Hill, Northern Kentucky, and other similar places where their wealth afforded them the luxury of eccentricities. I have known entertainment types on both American coasts who make their livings off creativity, and host grand extravaganzas at great expense for their children and grandchildren. But all such events and people fell short of what my daughters did for my grandson, for reasons that defy conventional logic. As adults, and for the first time in their lives my wife and two children all shared equally in creative input as each are extremely gifted at different crafting skills, which was why my wife had baked, and cooked for a straight 30 hours without going to bed or resting. She even forgot to eat all day Friday in preparation for our grandson’s birthday. Her mind was in rapture with creative enterprise as the cake, and various other extravagant deserts she prepared had her mind working on overdrive.
My daughters meanwhile where busy at work transferring their Liberty Township home into a storybook setting of a living mythological significance. Most everything cooked was done by either my wife or daughters, and every decoration was made or built by an immediate family member meaning my children or one of their husbands. Nothing was store bought directly. Everything was made by hand only for the event of my grandson’s first birthday. There was no financial reward at the end of the endeavor, not a single bit of it was done with a fiscal concern. The entire effort was performed for the solitary reason of launching the young fellow into a life filled with creativity unhindered by convention.
When I was a kid, my mother was a room mother at school hoping that it would engage me more in my classes which I found grotesquely boring. I hated every moment of school, starting as early as kindergarten. My teachers noticed my obvious athletic ability early on, but more than even that, they found I was very artistically inclined. My art projects were always the features hanging up in class for all to see as my teachers hoped to use me to show what a good job they were doing, and hoped to inspire other students to do the same—which none of them could of course. The reason is that I learned my creativity at home, from my mother who would do multiple craft projects all the time. As a room mother for our holiday parties, she would do elaborate gifts to give all the kids in my class. She did this until I was in the fourth grade and every kid wanted her for a mother. Many of them acted like the little craft gifts she brought to school to give them were the best things they had ever received in their lives. For some, it was. Even some of those young kids who would grow up and become wealthy, driving Ferraris and indulging in the rewards of fiscal surplus never forgot the wonderful things that Mrs. Hoffman did for them during their grade school holiday parties. The reason is that many of their parents were just beginning to accept the progressive dual income role that is now the standard today and they had no parents at home who did nice things for them—because the parents were too busy.
I made a point with my own children to make sure they at least had what I had—hopefully more. I made it so that my wife was always home, and my children had unlimited creativity to indulge in to build their brains. My children when they were little came home from school, and went straight into the basement where they built entire cities out of wood, cardboard, and putty. This went on until they were essentially graduated from high school. My wife extended the tradition my mom had started and provided for my children–an unlimited creative environment. My wife, a creative bastion herself makes blankets, clothing, cakes, and exotic foods and is a limitless resource of creativity that mixes style and fashion perfectly. When she was a teenage girl she was a model for the John Casablanca School of Modeling and had parents who had wonderfully high tastes. She was set to become a fashion model in New York—until she met me. That sense of style helped shape my kids from the raw creativity that I had, into a careful balance of fashion that my wife brought to the table. The result has been the best of the two worlds. The culmination of that experience was seen at the magnificent party my children put on for my grandson—and extended family.
The intention was not to impress anybody, not me, not the family, not their neighbors—nobody. My children simply wanted to participate in the act of creation with the opportunity to provide for my grandson a life that holds all possibilities that the mind might possibly generate. Many might think that the little boy will never remember the events—that such an extravaganza was a waste of time. But they fail to understand that even though the brain does not consciously remember, it unconsciously writes information upon itself forming the static patterns of an individual’s life. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW STATIC PATTERNS. This is why it is so important to put good things into a brain even during sleep so that good things come out of the mind.
Driving home the other day on my motorcycle a very expensive Harley Davidson pulled up alongside me with its radio blaring. Normally motorcycle riders wave to one another, but this guy didn’t want to look at me. He was a middle aged guy, bald, fat around the middle, and he had a mustache typical of cops and firefighters. Sure enough by the stickers on the back of his motorcycle he displayed several showing that he belonged to a firefighter’s union. He seemed to recognized me because of my heavily anti-union stance, especially among cops, firefighters, and teachers. He was playing classic rock on his Harley radio very loud and truly thought he was cool. I looked at him directly laughing hoping to engage him, but he refused to look my way. He was an example of garbage in, garbage out. Young people in their 20’s can put garbage into their minds and hide the results from the rest of the world because they are only a few years away from their childhoods—from the constant positive messages aimed at kids through toy commercials, and popular entertainment. But after abusing themselves from 18 to 30 with careless sex, terrible music, and chemical intoxicants such as marijuana and alcohol the effects begin to show by age 31 to 40. By the time those individuals are 40 to 60 they look like beat up sacks of garbage that have been drug behind a truck for twenty years. Their cell structures rebel against years of abuse and their small minds cannot give any other command to their bodies but to look like chaotic messes. They are often fat, smelly, and look sickly. This rider was a victim of many years of bad decisions and his music was an attempt to carry him back to the beginning of his life, to his morning years. In his mind he hoped that a young 20-year-old girl who is at her own beginning might find him appealing. But the young girls only see a ruined old man—fat, ugly, hairy in all the wrong places, and a follower of other such men because he’s so proud of his “union brotherhood.” The girls laugh and snicker sending photo texts to their girlfriends making fun of the Harley rider as they pull up next to the guy at stop lights.
The reason my daughters put on such an elaborate party for my grandson was to give him the start of a life that carries him far away from the fate of people like the Harley rider. It was to launch him into a lifelong quest of creativity that will take him further than any of us have been able to go thus far. The extravagance was not to impress, but to repeal a society that does not value such things—which is why society is struggling with so many personal issues. The party was intended to write upon the young boy’s static patterns a brain activity that carries him to new heights not yet known, for a life that has possibilities only experienced through boundless creativity.
I am proud of them and all their work. They did what they did not for a single ounce of social gratitude, but for the unsaid mysteries that feed the human mind of a young child. Birthdays are a celebration of life and in our family; life is meant to be lived not squandered. It would be a failure if my grandson grew up and became like the unionized Harley rider, middle aged and still stuck mentally at the age of 15, and still looking for girls the same age. The work my family did was to insure against that tragic scenario, to guarantee that our grandson will grow up to reach for the stars instead of another bottle of Jack Daniels and become just another adult porn addict. My wife stayed up all day and night cooking and baking to make sure that her grandson can begin the second year of his life with the knowledge that life can be whatever you make it to be. Learning to make life good starts by developing creativity at an early age. Creativity can be applied not just toward career goals but in every aspect of life from the time that a person wakes up in the morning until they journey off to sleep each night.
I love mornings because like my grandson’s life, they hold infinite possibilities for creative use toward goals only a human being can conger up. I never tire of their infinite possibilities as the sun gradually grows brighter throughout the day. I am proud of the party not only for my grandson’s life, but for the rest of my family, who contributed, from my mom who went against the grain when the rest of the world was going to their jobs to be the mom every kid in school wanted. 
I gave that to my fashion model wife who gave even more of that creativity to my own kids. While at Disney World over this past summer, my children hatched this birthday party by looking at the way Downtown Disney was decorated and decided to elaborate further into their own backyard for my grandson’s first birthday. I am proud to have watched the creative arc occur over many decades culminating at this wonderful event, dedicated to a life lived, not squandered to faceless decay. As my reference to the Harley rider shows distain, it is because in the morning of his life, he chose to waste it, and the cost of his waste is evident now, no matter how shiny the motorcycle, or loud the radio. For my grandson, the first steps into his life will more than guarantee that his life will not be wasted as the day of his life lengthens and gets warmer, and busier muddled with complexity. The intention of the party was so that when he arrives at bed at the end of the day he can rest his head knowing that he lived his day fully, and utilized every measure of what is offered to the mind that thinks creatively.
Rich Hoffman
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