Hello you
We tend to feel afraid of creativity, of using our imagination to bring something to life. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s because it comes from within us and so we attach our self worth to it. I often wonder if this fear stems from growing up. When we were children creativity was part of our natural essence, of who we are. Somewhere along the way to adulthood our relationship with it gets polluted. We’re judged for it, graded on it or worse - mocked. We turned to competition and our flow disappeared. Then we perhaps branded ourselves as not being creative at all - but we still are. If you’re human you’re creative. The scale we access depends on our acceptance of it.
This is where play comes in. My personal expressions of creativity are writing, photography and film. I’ve turned these into a job so they can feel quite serious. For a long time they felt too serious. I lost the feeling of weightless joy I had for them in the beginning which was free from attachment and felt like pure play.
When I used to write poems in my Purple Ronnie notebook as a child I knew nobody would see them. My words weren’t being sent out to thousands of people across the world. The internet hadn’t even been invented yet. All I cared about was letting words flow out of me as and when I felt them. It was natural, uninterrupted flow. When I fell in love with photography I just wanted to capture moments and people I loved. There was nowhere to post them, no likes or comments to measure them by.
Which was better? I’m not sure really because I create things I’m much more proud of now but finding play in creativity can be hard in an adult world. Creativity doesn’t like schedules, rules, judgment, inner critics or perfectionism. They scare it away. Our creativity wants to be played with. It needs to be played with in order to flow through us, free from judgement or any kind of over thinking. Creativity comes from our body not our mind.
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