MacGyver It Up
The Creative Advantage of Scarcity
or Making the Most Out of What You Have Right Now
“The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.”
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
Growing up, for years my favorite program on television was MacGyver. Mullets and underwritten, overacted villains aside, I still love it today. Everyone else was welcome to the TV six days a week. But come Monday night, they better back away from the set and let Richard Dean Anderson do his best to save the day with little more than the contents of his pocket. We don’t see many shows or characters like this anymore, ones built largely on a framework of positivity, hope, integrity, personal character, friendship, loyalty, and self-sacrifice.
As visually stunning, cleverly written, and superbly executed as many modern series are, so many of them are obsessed with nihilism, broken relationships, hopelessness, narcissism, entropy, and death. So much so that I sometimes feel I need to take a soul-level shower after finishing a few episodes. But that, ladies and gentlemen, is a rant for another day.
I’ve been rewatching several episodes lately and taking the opportunity to digest certain aspects of MacGyver’s character and behavior that hit me differently at my age. MacGyver was a man who:
worked with exactly what he had at the time.
consistently took risks in the face of opposition and peril.
solved problems by thinking first.
didn’t take forever to make decisions.
lived in the moment and was always present with those he loved.
viewed service, friendship, and self-sacrifice, as a natural part of life and rewards unto themselves.
Each of these ideas is worthy of exploration. But for now, I want to look at just two of them, a pair of common MacGyver traits that offer us an opportunity to lead a more effective and satisfying life.
Working With What We Have
Life is a building game, a complex, ever-changing construction project, and one in which we often don’t have enough or even the right materials for the job at hand. Nails but no hammer. Wood for framing the walls but not enough for the roof. Bricks without mortar.
There is an aspect of unpredictability built into everything, even in the tasks we do best and in our most trusted long-term relationships. People will always surprise us, especially when we’ve given up on their ability to do so.
Among those exquisite moments of perfection that slide through life on occasion, is everything else we must navigate. Woven into our existence is a fabric of incomplete ecstasy, a garment made of innumerable partial satisfactions, too sweet to be ignored and too bitter to be forgotten. Our days require us to fit together pieces that haven’t been carved precisely for the task. Life demands that we act, that we create even when we’ve been left with only a few colors in the crayon box.
Waiting until you have just the right mix of tools or training, until you have exactly the right words for the moment, waiting until every incongruity is shaved down to a flat plain, is its own kind of madness. Worse yet, it’s a madness society readily accepts. We will never have everything we need or desire in the moment. We will never possess every resource we think necessary for the journey ahead. We will often not know what to say until we’re in the middle of a conversation. And we will not possess the confidence we think we need for some new endeavor until we’re already deep into the process. Do it anyway.
I am telling myself this truth as much, if not more, than I am telling you. Build from what you have now. Choose beauty and creativity over perfection. Choose tenacity, curiosity, and the unknown over the false perception of complete security. MacGyver had to save lives, rescue captured people, defuse bombs, destroy viruses, evade hordes of militants, and escape psychotic killers. Thankfully, most of us do very few of these things. But our problems are every bit as real to us.
I realize we’re talking about a show, and oftentimes, some of MacGyver’s experiments wouldn’t work for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the law of averages and the decay of materials over time. But if MacGyver was never willing to piece together a solution out of the resources within his reach, he and several others around him would have lost the fight a long time ago.
Our frequent stubbornness to formulate a solution to our problem using what we have right now comes from multiple places within our psyche. We’ve spent a lifetime being told we don’t have what it takes, a lifetime telling ourselves the same thing. And the world, especially social media, dedicates considerable time and money trying to sell you on something they promise will make you whole, something that will fill the void they helped to widen. We also live in a time where resources are abundant, our access to information is nearly unlimited, and the number of choices we have, almost too many to be helpful.
It isn’t abundance and access on their own that empower us to solve problems. It is will, courage, responsibility, and creativity. Those individuals who are willing to focus their thinking, consider new options, use what they have access to, and make a choice when others are still dragging their feet and staring at the ground, are going to be the ones cutting new trails in the woods.
Every great invention started at nil. Many of the world’s creative business owners, non-profit leaders, or innovators began work in their garage or basement with scant materials and incomplete information. There is a need in us not merely to savor abundance but to taste the bitterness of a certain level of scarcity. This state of not having sparks higher levels of thought and more intense creativity. Need can drive us forward. It can fuel our passion to uncover that which is hidden. It awakens within each of us, the desire to fill the empty spaces of life.
Creating anything or solving a problem is a willful act to take responsibility for, and act decisively with, our own capacity to enact positive change, both in the world and in the lives of others. Part of that privilege is about making choices in the midst of imperfection, moving forward before every stone on the walking path has been laid.
We will never have exactly what we think we need. Of course, detailed preparation is key, when we have the time for it. But even when we manage to gather everything around us, oftentimes, the circumstances will have changed, suddenly requiring us to hunt for new resources or an altered solution. Nothing in this world stands still.
This idea of lean resourcefulness can fashion its own state of heightened creative output. This is evidenced in myriad examples throughout history. Many people understand this and sometimes put themselves into a state of limited access with the goal of forcing themselves to overcome obstacles with less, and create something new without many of the tools they’ve come to rely on.
I often recall something I read years ago about the late Elvin Jones, one of the twentieth century’s greatest jazz drummers. He carved out a new sound during an era of fierce creative competition, and played with some of the most innovative musicians of his or any time, including Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, McCoy Tyner, Lee Morgan, Wynton Marsalis, Donald Byrd, and Stan Getz, and was a vital part of the mysterious, uplifting, and eternal sound of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.
I read once that, once in a while, Elvin would deliberately limit the number of drums he’d play with, just to sharpen his ability, his ingenuity, and his resourcefulness. He’d show up for practice with only a ride cymbal or show up for a concert with just a snare and a pair of hi-hats. What a brave act, especially for a musician at his level. It displays a simultaneous level of confidence and humility. Confidence, in that he believed on some level that he could still make something beautiful no matter how limited his tool belt was. Humility, in that it takes putting down our pride or arrogance to admit we will always have more to learn.
This is not unlike Michael Jordan’s attitude toward self-improvement - a man who continued to ask the opinions of and really listen to a wide range of people around him. We’re not just talking about coaches or other players, but ball boys, fans, janitors, anyone who spent enough time around him to soak up his playing. What an act of maturity and wisdom.
But this choice by Elvin Jones to limit his resources so that he might instead breathe life into a greater level of innovation is a truth that has been with us since the dawn of time. With only a single drum, he forced himself to imagine new possibilities with tools he’d been using for years. He had to come up with innumerable ways to find unique sounds, using every angle, every corner and piece of hardware, every subtle or overt motion, to draw out a percussive symphony from what many would consider an impassable limitation.
There is a certain strategic advantage to these times of limitation. A certain leanness of access forces us to increase our intimacy with whatever we’re engaging with. It’s not surprising that some of the most memorable and meaningful seasons during a couple’s relationship are often ones where the two must struggle together against a certain kind of scarcity. They not only learn to be more creative in life, but the necessity forces them to draw nearer to each other, to ask questions they hadn’t learned to ask until that moment, to find new levels of vulnerability and courage together that they’d not recognized in themselves beforehand. All of it, ultimately leading them to a new state of ecstasy and maturity together.
At times, fewer resources means cleaner thinking. I’m not referring to a moral or spiritual cleanliness, but a creative and intellectual purity - the same kind that writers or painters feel by getting themselves alone in a cabin in the woods with no one else around. Our decision-making process doesn’t need this level of solitude to be innovative. But it does often ask us to push aside excesses to allow our mind to turn up the intensity on its own potential.
Excess in anything for too long breeds gluttony and laziness - even in purely intellectual terms. Suck on too much fat of the land and we forget what that fat is worth, forget how hard it was to obtain. Limitations followed by individual will, together ignite a cascade effect in our minds. This state forces us to push our thoughts harder, to explore concepts much deeper, to consider seemingly crazy and impractical ideas that one day might turn out to be readily accepted as commonplace.
Innovation and creative problem-solving demand a certain tenacity. And tenacity is never born from excess. It crawls its way up and out of the tunnels of need and unfulfilled dreams toward the surface light of realization. There are certain thoughts and emotions only available to us in the creative upheaval found exclusively in a time of limited resources. Too much clutter will clip our wings and leave us walking in circles around the status quo. The mind needs space to wander and fly.
This idea is directly connected to the second aspect of MacGyver’s personality I want to explore, his willingness to act instead of waiting for something to happen… to move instead of waiting for the decision to be made for him.
Decisiveness
When conflict was at its worst, when the string of tension and risk was pulled to its tightest note, MacGyver chose action. Specifically, he committed himself to making intelligent, thoughtful decisions quickly, instead of waiting for the circumstances of life to decide for him.
This is a key point of contention and growth for many of us, a place we sometimes find uncomfortable to consider for how close to home it hits. If we’re honest with ourselves, it would likely surprise us how often we do this, how much time we spend stalling, wandering about without making a clear choice, waiting until the events of life sort of force us into one path or another.
What frightens me is how comfortable we are with this. Why are we frequently willing to accept a less-favorable outcome through indecision for the sake of perceived equilibrium over a temporary unrest that has a much higher chance of leading us toward a more satisfying outcome? That is of course fodder for a deeper psychological and behavioral study. But we often choose paths of lesser, if not the least resistance.
On its own this isn’t a terrible thing. It is also common in nature. This mindset helps both animals and humans conserve energy, avoid danger, and prolong survival. Used too often, it dulls our will toward life and meaning. It makes us the products of circumstance instead of choice. Both are acceptable ways to live. I’ll leave it to you to decide which is more satisfying.
Another aspect of this mindset is that we often find it difficult to own up to our decisions and their resulting consequences, both the good and bad alike. We want choices but don’t want to live with their aftermath. If things go sideways on our watch, we’re to blame. If things go off the rails when it’s simply “the world’s fault” or “life’s doing,” we’ve got someone or something else to blame.
No matter what comes of our indecision, the more we practice it, the more we reinforce and raise our comfort level with a worldview based on reaction instead of action. It also leaves us feeling quietly regretful about not taking a more central role in the course of our own life.
When you watch MacGyver under pressure, he employs all his intellect, all his experience, every bit of his creativity, but runs through these scenarios quickly. He understands that time is immensely valuable, and increasingly scarce. He makes a choice after thinking but not overthinking a solution, and follows through with action right away.
In his case, a failed solution may actually kill him. In our lives, most of the time, not hitting the mark simply means losing time, money, opportunity, and connection. And while we can never turn back the clock and redo a previous season of life, we always have another chance to do it better on the next round.
I realize we’re talking about a fictional character. And most of us don’t find ourselves having to deal with deadly nuclear meltdowns or subduing escaped criminals. However, the truth behind these ideas and this character still resonates. Using what we have within our grasp allows us to make changes to our life today, to move steadily ahead instead of waiting for the perfect set of resources to accumulate.
Living more decisively seems more dangerous and a bit more unpredictable. And in some ways, it is. Making larger choices more quickly sometimes puts us in a more volatile and more vulnerable position. But it is frequently a much more strategic one, a place from which we have a better view, greater experience, and more energy to build, create, and form stronger bonds with others.
As Patrick Stewart’s Captain Picard once declared emphatically, “Life is making choices.” The very lifeblood of our personal and collective story is one of choices, a perpetual accounting of our ongoing decision-making process. Yes, existence still goes on in the absence of decisiveness, but it tends to degrade in quality. Passivity is one the most damaging “sins” we have in our repertoire. It can leave the function of moving life forward in the hands of individuals with less than stellar intentions but simply more will to act than we have.
In the absence of clear and timely choices, we create a dark whirlpool effect in our lives, a kind of swirling black hole where dreams, intentions, solutions, creativity, and relationships disappear as they get dragged into the abyss by the unforgiving embrace of time and the gravity of pure circumstance.
Sometimes, doing anything at all is superior to our indecision. I’m not condoning idiocy or flippancy in your decisions. Using your mind to its fullest is always encouraged. I’m only stressing that an inferior but workable choice is often better than none at all. At the very least, this decision will afford us the opportunity to learn from a resulting mistake or passable but subpar outcome, and move forward with more confidence and greater accuracy next time.
Decisiveness and resourcefulness, together, also ground us in the present while enabling us to plan for the future. They awaken us not simply to the necessities of survival, but to the needs of others, and to our own desire for change. Using what we have creatively and making key decisions on a daily basis teaches us to own our lives with greater intention. We learn the ideas of sound investment, not only in our finances but investment in our goals and dreams, in our intellectual and spiritual lives, and in our relationships.
These traits also help us honor our humanity more completely. For those who believe in God, we show honor to His creative vision of human beings and to those whose shoulders we stand upon. For those who don’t believe in a creator, we display honor for the vastness of time and trials it took to get us here. Either way, we honor the complexity and potential of human life to be something worthy of praise and exploration, not merely an exercise in dry survival and futility.
Those who make the most of what they have and decide quickly may frequently make mistakes. But errors are inevitable, and valuable assets that allow us to sharpen our vision and strategy toward life. Hiding from our need to make good decisions while we wait for perfection and abundance to appear from thin air is foolishness and profoundly wasteful. Remember, there’s no guarantee that the season to come will even be more abundant; it might be leaner than the one we find ourselves in today. Better to make the most of our time and tools now.
Honor yourself and the life you’ve been given by refusing passivity and perfection at the gate. You don’t have everything you need at this moment. You never will. But this fact can drive you toward tremendous creativity and expansion. Making choices more quickly allows for greater practice and subsequently, more refinement in everything we do. Life will never be easy. But it can be better, deeper, and more meaningful.
MacGyver knew life was a precious and fleeting thing. He understood this so much that he didn’t try to handle it with kid gloves. He knew that building any kind of worthwhile life demanded that he make difficult choices with limited resources. Like MacGyver, we will find ourselves often surprised by what we just might come up with when we scrounge around a bit, when we create instead of just waiting for life to happen.