You're human: creativity is your birthright!
The problem is not too little creativity; it's too much
“The problem is not too little creativity but too much”—seriously? You don't believe me, that's fine, I get it. I didn't get it either, when my creative collaborator James Navé first threw this out in a conversation some years ago. Now, I am absolutely certain he's right.
First of all, what's too much? I don't mean it in the way you hear some people say, "Oh, there are too many books being published / too much bad art in the world," or that thought that haunts you when you get stuck and dispirited about a project: does the world really need another novel/poem/story/memoir/painting? Very likely the world doesn’t, though I will always argue that the world needs more creative people—or, rather, more people expressing their creativity. Why? Not because of the output, but because people who value their own creative expression are generally more fulfilled in themselves, and therefore less inclined to get satisfaction by telling other people what to do.
And here you may argue: what about Hemingway? What about Van Gogh? I will reply that that is a different argument: that's an argument about striving for a goal, an ambition, an idea of perfection; it’s an argument about being appreciated for your creativity by the wider world; it’s an argument about poverty and capitalism and keeping the wolf from the door. Would Van Gogh have been so tortured if he'd had a substantial trust fund?
But then, what about the people who "aren't creative"? You'll hear people say, "I don't have a creative bone in my body." Following Navé, I will argue that's simply not possible. It's a misconception. The problem is our culture's too-narrow definition of creativity.
How about we define creativity as awareness of everything that's not there? If something's not there, you have to create a picture of it in your mind: what your lover is doing right now, how your closet will look if you rearrange it, how your garden will grow. And what, in your human makeup, enables you to be aware of things that aren't there? Your imagination.
Even if you're a spreadsheet kind of person, your imagination enables you to design the spreadsheet, according to what your rational mind requires. The spreadsheet doesn't exist before you create it. Or a soccer play. Or the arrangement of dishes in your kitchen cabinets. How do I want this to look? You try out different ideas in your imagination (even if you're not entirely conscious of them) and go with one. And if you don't like it, for whatever rational or irrational reason, you try another.
Choosing, organizing, is creativity. When you look at a scene, you choose what's foreground and what's background. Are you looking at an urn or two profiles in silhouette? You may not have known you created one image until someone points out that you could have created the other.
This is where the "too much" comes in. It's the organizing part of your mind that gets tired or feels overwhelmed. Creativity can feel like work, and you'd rather veg out in front of the TV—as happens to us all. And if you're trapped in the current Western cultural definition of creativity, you're also overwhelmed by the demands of output and quality and "originality," and perhaps also the feeling that you're wasting your time. Scrapbooking is frivolous! If you're a fine upstanding citizen, aren't you supposed to be contributing to the gross national product? Don't you have a work ethic? And everybody knows that work and play are not the same thing.
So, if decide you're "not creative," you get a pass on all of that. Also, you don't have to wear purple or drink to excess.
But who says that creativity is supposed to result in some kind of artistic output? Who says that if it does, that output is supposed to be "good" if the activity is to be worthwhile? Who's judging good, anyway, and by what metric? What if it's just good for you: for your physical and psychic and emotional health? And therefore, good for the people around you?
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