Are you a creative person?
How would you define creativity?
To me, creativity is about making something. It’s as simple as that, only it isn’t simple, because it’s so easy to just drift through life passively, without making anything. To me, creativity requires faith, whether you’re writing a novel or baking a cake — faith that it matters, that it’s worth it, that you shouldn’t just channel surf instead.
I believe creativity is everywhere, we just need to open our eyes to it – in our communities, and in ourselves. Next time you pass a house with a pretty garden out front, or an apartment with window boxes or something beautiful in the window, think about the care someone took to make that happen. Someone chose to put the tulips on the left, to plant an azalea bush, or tomatoes, or basil. Someone chose to hang that piece of stained glass, or those purple curtains.
It’s so easy to think creative people are the ones whose names are on the front of a novel, in the credits of a film, the program for a play. But it’s harmful to think this way, too, to cast creativity as a prize to be won, rather than a way we all can live, without any credentials, and without anyone’s permission. Harmful because life feels so much richer, so much more full of possibilities, when we celebrate and nurture our creativity – when we realize our life is our art. Then we truly begin to live.