Today's
quotation:
Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks,
breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.
Mary Lou Cook
|
Today's
Meditation:
Many
people mistake imitation for creativity, and we don't have
to look any further than the ever-present entertainment
world to see the truth in that statement. Very few
of the current songs or movies on the charts are at all
creative; rather, they're imitations of the songs that
have been successful before them. The producers and
marketers know that audiences take a long time to embrace
things that are truly creative, and time is something they
don't have--they need to make their money now, and the
best way to do so is to make something that has a ring of
familiarity to audiences.
True
creativity, though, is a part of all of us that would help
us a lot if we were actually to use it. It gives us
a sense of accomplishment, and it gives us a way of
expressing ourselves that is truly unique--often a person
can express him or herself through drawing or
through music better than he or she can do so through
words, but if that person settles for imitating others,
then the true value of the creative process will be lost.
When
I was a kid, I was hyper-sensitive to criticism.
When I took up painting at a young age, I showed a
finished painting to a relative who immediately criticized
it. I didn't pain any more. As an adult, I
took up painting again, and I did what I felt like, what
felt good to me. I ended up throwing away most of
the paintings because I had so much fun creating them that
I didn't care at all what the finished product looked
like. Nor did I care if anyone else really liked
them. The process helped me a great deal to get over
a lot of fears that I had concerning expression, even in
other modes of expression, such as speech and writing.
Write
a page of gibberish--just let the words come, and enjoy
the process. Draw a picture that just comes to
you--trust your arm and hand to do what they have to do to
make just the right picture. Then just let it
be. True creativity is a beautiful activity, and if
you can be truly creative, you'll add a richness to your
life.
|