The Amazing Promises of Hataciku
Creativity for Better Living and Mental Health
Invented by the Author, Hataciku is a portmanteau word for tanka and sciku haikus [Haiku-Tanka-Sciku]. It is not related to any specific form of the traditional 400-year-old Japanese haiku, or their associated tanka or sciku poetry. Haiku is a form of Japanese poem consisting of 17 syllables written as 3 lines of phrase arranged in a pattern sequence of 5–7–5 syllables, with roots from beyond a millennium earlier.
A Hataciku poem consists of 65 syllables written in 3 stanzas as 11 lines of phrase arranged in the pattern sequence of 5–7–5–5–7–5–7–7–5–7–5 = 65 syllables. It communicates clearly in an 11-line structure with a relatable language that is easily understood. It has no Japanese tradition of any lineage or trace.
The minimalist essence of Hataciku makes each word and syllable counts. It projects the inherent beauty already seen in various haiku-like poetic forms. It embraces the simplicity, brevity, and power of haikus-ness when appreciated in its 11 lines and 65 syllables. It has a title for focus. It has a season. It has multiple subjects. It has no punctuation and can be rhythmic. The Hataciku poem infuses the energy of human creativity to inspire and motivate hope in appreciation of all that life brings for our inevitable life victory.
The Hataciku poem stands out through its prime numbers — 3 stanzas, 11 lines, and 65 syllables. 65 is not however a prime number since it can be further divided by 5 and 13, both being prime numbers. Noted too of course that (6+5) equals 11, a prime number, as well as (1+1) equals 2, another prime number. Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves.
Living in independent solitude among crowded natural numbers, the resolute essence of Hataciku poetic beauty can be distilled from the space between its natural prime numbers of 2, 3, 5, 11, and 13; where amazing human creativity and intellectual license will roam wild and free to produce the wonderful Hataciku poetry to soothe and comfort the heart, mind, and soul.
CREATING CREATIVITY THROUGH HATACIKU
For creativity to flourish, it is necessary for children to be actively involved in the creation process of their own learning. Children need a combination of attributes in order to express creativity effectively in life. These attributes are neither genetic nor naturally born with. Many children need to be emboldened and empowered to develop the competency to engage in creative pursuits and human interaction.
A child may choose not to engage in creative thinking or activities because he/she lacks self-confidence and self-esteem, thinking that there is nothing of value he/she can offer. Anxiety and fear of failure, which usually accompany some forms of punitive action, also make some children reluctant to work through tasks with several possible solutions.
Creativity enriches our children's lives. Everyone can be creative to some degree. Teachers and learning facilitators are responsible to create an empowering environment of self-discovery, for children to explore and pursue their particular interests and talents. In the longer run, creative teens and adults would develop growth mindsets to make valuable contributions to society and their own lives. In a rapidly changing world, they would also be prepared to adapt to emergent enriching careers during their lifetime.
Creative people are always needed; people who can see connections between seemingly unrelated images and data sets, apply innovative ideas, communicate their thoughts, and work in alignment with others to solve problems as well as make effective decisions.
Creative persons have most of the following characteristics:
- personality traits, such as self-confidence, tolerance of ambiguity, curiosity, and motivation;
- emotional processes, such as play fantasy, love challenge, task involvement, and tolerance of anxiety; and
- cognitive abilities, such as divergent thinking, ability to ‘transform’ thinking, reorder information, shift thinking ‘mindsets’, problems sensitivity, knowledge depth and breadth, and insightful judgment.
Hataciku writing nurtures and inculcates creative thinking and empowers learners to take ownership of their knowledge and abilities. A common learning challenge is the difficulty in digesting and distilling complex concepts into simpler or singular terms, even after repeated visual video and audio examples.
Writing Hataciku develops and empowers oral and written communication skills by using common words and language that is highly descriptive, rich in imagery, easily accessible and commonplace items to embolden the generation of concise and meaningful text and phrases.
The constraints of 11 lines, 3 stanzas, and 65 syllables in Hataciku writing provide a structure that makes word choice and concept phrase more intense, in order to release the mental creative juice to produce creative and yet focused writing.
The Hataciku poet navigates without lighted signs to think and choose how to connect the dots, reduce words, increase syllables and fill in the space between words to within 11 lines and 65 syllables in order to conjure deeper and more precise meaning in the final poem.
The classroom is transformed into a Hataciku Lab for peer-to-peer creation and cooperative learning. Different perspectives and methods, together with new words discovery, stimulate new thoughts and innovative styles to generate intensive participation in class-wide discussions, often in variable mixed teams. The Lab becomes quickly an “Ideas Laboratory” where uncommon sense-making drives diverse learning trajectories towards the single-minded goal of Hataciku poems.
Creativity reaches unprecedented heights to break through hitherto self-imposed mental boundaries “to know what I think until I see what I say” in the unending process of deconstructing and constructing their thought processes for elegance and simplicity in their final Hataciku poem.
A unique challenge for Hataciku creativity is to eventually contribute to addressing systematically what is known as a “wicked problem”, which refers to a social or cultural problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of its complex and interconnected nature. Wicked problems lack clarity in both their aims and solutions, and are subject to real-world constraints which hinder risk-free attempts to find a solution.
CLOSING REMARKS
Hataciku writings encourage learners to embark on a journey of learning cycles with multiple concept development and application milestones. They, therefore, stimulate lateral thinking and synthesis within and between words and phrases as part of the process of reflection and correction. Learners get to explore their own biases and thoughts, as well as emotional and practical issues related to anything important to themselves. In the end, they also refine their writing skills and precision in thinking.
Reading and writing Hataciku poetry teaches how to creatively reconstruct and deconstruct thoughts and feelings into a few lines and limited words. It is good training for intellectual and creative development, besides improving writing skills. As a reflective tool, writing Hataciku also promises to be wide-ranging for creative impact in a classroom, counseling, coaching, leadership, talent development, people management, mental health, corporate management, or any other human relationship and experience setting.
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