A Business Week study showed that a 40-year-old adult is only about 2% as creative as a child of five.

Ouch! Just what robs us of creativity?

We do. Through the slow march of conformity, we trade imagination for approval. Our institutions often favor correctness over exploration, standardization over spark.

Yet creativity can—and must—thrive outside the expected. The Coca-Cola logo was designed by an accountant. A sculptor invented the ballpoint pen. The Wright brothers, bicycle mechanics, created flight.

“Creative activity cannot be forced,” said educator Charles D. Orth. “The creative people of this world have always been the free, unchanneled minds, the non-conformists, the individuals, the uninhibited.”

So don’t let schooling define your education. Stay wild with wonder. Laugh, play, risk, imagine. Create something today that only you could bring into the world.

“Conformity,” said President John F. Kennedy, “is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”