Be creative, be you.
very few of us remain creative as adults, so here’s what to do.
“The creative person has to dissolve all should and should nots. He needs freedom and space, vast space; he needs the whole sky and all the stars. Only then can his innermost spontaneity start growing.” — Osho
Creativity is an unfathomable ability that we are gifted to have as a species. To create is to define your own reality, and the lawlessness, abstract and absurdity of life is a masterpiece continuously being written by all. Only you can take away your creativity, and many of us do so willingly, all of the time.
Let’s take it from the top— how the hell did we even get here?
As we grow older, we grow into ourselves. The world becomes notably darker or unfair, something we no longer wish to identify with when the days of santa claus are long behind. We either lose touch with our reality, or we get too absorbed into someone else’s version of reality.
The inner-child is lost with each passing year, each business meeting or zoom call, every missed birthday or overdue bill. Instead we overlook the paintbrushes and all the glitter for a rather real, super comfy armchair that we’ll call the comfortzone. On this chair, we have a semblance of control over everything.
But why, when our youthful days were spent mostly on a playground, do we shun the idea of being so carefree and creative as such ever again? Is growing up really to blame for our lack of spontaneity?
With age, perceved failure becomes real. All too real.
Among our peers especially, how our successes are measured and perceived by others, somehow becomes the deciding factor for whether or not we continue to take the creative risk.
Our lack of creative expression in adulthood becomes a literal fret against our very survival in the world of work and social networking. In essence, we give up a lot — too much — to have a sense of belonging, or comfort.
Let’s face it.
Being creative is uncomfortable. It means putting your entire self-expression out there, painting the world with your stuff, and hoping someone gets it.
Nobody creates for themself. We create to be understood, because we don’t wholly understand ourselves.
There are few things in life which are worth value beyond money and social validation. In my opinion, the very essence of who you are as a person and your ability to create, is the crem de la crem.
For many people, creation could look like having children and raising a family. For others, it could be synthesizing a medicine to save lives.
What you bring to the world is a form of self-expression, a way that your mind has perceived reality and built upon the abstract of its existence.
We were given a world, a whole universe to explore and solve problems with. Every life is an addition to this creation. Another person is another opportunity to bring marvelous possibilities to human life. The fact that we are coexisting and co-creators of this reality is truly remarkable.
This is the beauty of life — it’s whatever the hell you make of it. Our time here should be treated as a chance at fulfilling our truest selves, not cowering from our dreams in light of passing judgments.
Society doesn’t place much emphasis on creativity in today’s world, though.
We are conditioned from young to take in as much information as possible so we can take tests that measure our ability to cope well under-pressure. The ones that are successful at tests, then go on to pursue careers in industries that generate a lot of money (often at an unfair expense of exploiting others).
Our creativity is lost when we are taught repetition, how to use mathematics for profit, how to become the best at being a person that stays in their metaphorical “lane”.
It’s preached to us that not everybody will be gifted with being the next Einstein or Picasso or Shakespeare, and that most of us are simply picking away at the food-chain until we reach our end.
I don’t believe in this demi-wisdom — and yeah so what, I’m inventing a word here — because why not?
Resolutions
There is a way to overwrite this indoctrination that we aren’t special, that we’re just another number whose field is oversaturated so why bother.
Imagination is the first step. Say we were raised to feel special and encouraged to do what matters most to us — to express ourselves in spite of money — then you will find that the sky is the limit. But because we don’t imagine such things, the sky really has become the limit for most of us.
We could be an epithet of saints, a race of bohemians. Our potential is no longer defined to be limited by something that we feel is out of our control. Perhaps we could evolve out fear, an archaic drive that once served to help us survive, but is now the limiting factor in keeping us silenced.
We need to look to our childhood-selves and adopt that fearlessness that inspires creativity. We need curisoity, and then bravery, the second and third step from imagination.
Daring to dream will raise us to immeasurable heights in our creative endeavors. There is no how to guide on this, only you can give that back to you, no-one else.
We could all be poets and painters and artists and writers and musicians and architects and actors, and creators of our own universe. We all have the potential to be something that a robot cannot replace. I truly believe this is the time (with AI on the horizon) that creativity will be permissible to all generations ahead.
Hold the opportunity of each day being a blank canavas as your last.
“Many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are.”
— J.K. Rowling
Creativity is like a muscle. When we don’t exert it enough that muscle becomes stiff and difficult to use. In time you become restless without finding an outlet for your creative channel. There is a blockage, an absence at where to start and if its even worth the effort.
When something that is part of who you are as a human is suppressed, it will undoubtedly affect your mental well-being later on. The connection between the mind and the body is intrinsic. Both must work harmoniously for your survival. Osho, an Indian spiritual guru states in his book ‘Creativity: unleashes the forces within’ that, “Creativity is the highest form of rebellion.”
There is an interesting parallel that rests between the stages of human growth and Osho’s logic. When we are children we are carefree, unruly, wonderfully energetic and fearless. Children don’t understand the concept of boundaries because they are simply running on an energy, which is imaginative and exciting in a world where everything unfurls before them. In essence, children are rebels. Our teenage years see a stereotype of rebellion, which comes down to the angst of mutating from a playful child to a hormone-laden vehicle that is controlled and easily influenced. Through this transformation we somehow understand that we are shedding an important part of our being. The feathers of childhood are our — seemingly — last ties to imagination, and as we watch them flee our person, our carefree nature becomes lost. We adopt a set of rules and principals that often come at the expense of how others perceive us. Once the process has completed and all feathers are gone, we become fully-thinking, decision making adults that have lost touch with our imagination.
It becomes a battle against ourselves to prove something to this world, yet our social norms dictate to us that we can’t fully be ourselves. We become a composite of who we are as so to respect everybody else’s boundaries. We subscribe to a way of life that poses comfort and eventually eludes to restlessness. Most of us will, unfortunately, suppress our self-expressionism at the expense of fitting in.
The way out of this absent-mindedness is so simple and often overlooked as we get caught up in the tiresome nature of everyday life. It begins from within, and it doesn’t have to generate an income. A passion can still be a passion without it becoming work that we will eventually hate! And for the really passionate, that can be work that you love doing and longingly want to show up for.
The beauty of creativity is that its a natural phenomenon which will exist as long as you allow it to. When you allow it the air it needs, you allow it a given space within the time that you exist. Your expression becomes immortal. You will continue to be in this life, long after you’ve gone, when you create — that’s why people talk about “leaving their mark”. The idea that this is all random can be haunting, but it can also be an opportunity to let go in a way that has a positive affect on our world for years to come.
If being creative is a rebellion, then we need to rebel for the right reasons. We need to overcome something greater as a species and for the world of tomorrow to be better for our children in years to come. We can learn a lot from the fearlessness of kids. We can hone our playful tendencies. It’s all about what you do with what you have, regardless of all the odds that are (seemingly) against you. Forget the voices around you that preach demi-wisdom. Forget it, right now. They are adults who have become lackluster with self-doubt, infecting the ambitious with their own personal defeat.
Life stagnates when we begin to see days as long and difficult as opposed to another chance and another opportunity. The mind becomes riddled with doubt when we’ve been expressionless for too long, which gives anxiety and depression the green light. We often permit our own mental imprisonments and ask questions that only we can answer, but have forgotten how to. People burn themselves out all the time over tasks. Seldom we think to make magic just for arts sake. We don’t see immediate results, so why bother? We eat shit, watch crap, and talk garbage about others because we’re nurturing a broken mind that has lost touch with its creative roots.
If we spent half the time we do making sure the mind is content, then this world would be limitless for the inner-creative.
Be fruitful with life. It’s yours to play with and to make fun of. It’s a canvas ready to receive your fingerprints! The subjective opinion is just one opinion, and there are millions more waiting to accredit you with a well-done, an “I needed this”. Your mind is only free when you allow it to be free, when you give it self-expression, when it creates.
