I haven’t been coloring lately, which is what I usually do when I think about what I’ll be writing next. But I have worked on this painting.
I try to create every day. People who believe they aren’t creative are selling themselves short. Probably I could make a list of ten to twenty things you might do on any given day that would prove you create. It’s more likely that you don’t value what you do, or you measure it against what someone else does. I still contend you create.
ETA: At Mark’s request, a list is behind the cut. I’m providing it with the caveat that whoever reads can’t follow in their thoughts with, Yes, but… (as in, Yes, but no one hears it/sees it/knows about it or Yes, but I can’t/don’t make money doing it, or Yes, but that’s not actually “creative,” it’s just shit I do every day,) because those “buts” are how we sabotage and undervalue ourselves.
Random acts of creativity:
In one of the most basic daily activities most of us perform, anything you cook. New or old recipe, whether or not you’ve done it before, cooking is a creative act that nourishes more than the body. You made food. If you grew any of it yourself… wow.
You are at a standstill in your car or on the train, and a car barrels past, and you wonder, What’s your hurry, buddy? Then your mind begins answering: Just an entitled jerk? Maybe wife’s in labor? Late for work and boss is the jerk? Family’s in trouble and needs you? Guess what; you just created stories.
Did you ever give a child or a pet a bath and sing a little song to them while you did it? You created music out of nothing but your vocal cords and air! Did you make up the words? You are a lyricist, too!
On the subject of pets, do you play with them? You created happiness in another creature. Do you give them things for enrichment? You created an environment that engages and intrigues them. Do you ever take a pet for a walk or clean up their habitat and speak aloud to them as you do it? You performed a soliloquy to a rapt audience. Take a bow!
You come out of the market and see an elderly couple slowly crossing the parking lot to their car, one’s hand on the other’s arm. In the space of a few seconds, you imagine their whole life together, from two teens falling in love until now. You get a lump in your throat both as director and audience of your mental film clip.
Every single thing you do to your home. Organized a drawer? Purged your closet? Vacuumed up that dog hair? Cleaned your bathroom? You created a more comfortable home. And beyond that: pruned your inside plants? Trimmed a hedge? Raked up leaves? Rearranged the pots on your patio so everybody gets the sun they need? Bought a new throw to brighten up the back of your sofa? Picked up a bright vase at the thrift store for a dollar? You created a more beautiful home.
You’re riding your bike and you see a turtle on the road. Instantly, you create a horror story of the turtle’s fate. You can’t bear it. You create a superhero when you rest your bike on the shoulder, pick up the turtle, and transport it safely to the creek. You created a better ending.
You are watching something on television and you verbally react, telling characters what to do, making witty comebacks to the weather announcer, critiquing fashion, or tearing up at a sad or moving news story. You are allowing yourself to become a participant in the narrative, creating a character for each different scenario.
The creative dances you invent when you hear a favorite song on the radio or TV or when you just want to have a moment of foolish happiness: You are both choreographer and performer. You probably do your best work if you don’t have an audience, because all your anxiety and fear or shame falls away. What creative freedom!
Keep a journal online or on paper. You are a writer.
Use a cell phone or a camera to document some place or art or person or event. You are a photographer.
Assemble a jigsaw puzzle. Not only do you form a picture, you probably thought a million things while you did it. You are a time traveler, a historian, a biographer, a repository and organizer of all that your senses have encountered through a lifetime. You are a dazzling human wonder–and the puzzle looks good, too.
Every time you laugh, with friends and family or on your own, every time you sing or clap, every time you light a stick of incense or bow your head in a prayer or a meditative moment of gratitude or an expression of love and compassion, you raise the vibration of where you are and it is released into the larger environment. You are the creator of a better world.
You are why I love humans. You create love.
Beautiful painting. I love the way you have used the simple brush strokes to create the flowers.
List the things! List the things!
Thank you so much. I’ll ETA this post later to add a list, with a caveat.
Brilliant! I love them all. It’s wonderful that you have demonstrated how we are all creative many times per day without necessarily realising it.
You are such a positive person. As you know, I don’t like people very much (with a few notable exceptions).
Thank you!
If I am a positive person, it was a conscious choice that I clearly remember making in 1986 after my horrific 1985. I was not always–probably much of my teens and twenties would have earned me the label of “emo” or “goth” in different times–and there is backsliding, and my anxiety often makes it a struggle. I’m sensitive and empathic, and this can be a painful world, and humans can be so damnably human. As am I.
It’s funny, because I recently wrote a long text sort of describing that choice, and at the end, I said, “Thank you for being held text hostage to my Ted Talk.”