Is the world missing you?
You are creative. What’s more, when you don’t create you leave an empty space that just wants to be filled by you.
Truth: Everyone is creative
What is it that anchors people to the idea that they are uncreative? I hear it all the time: 'I can’t make stuff up! Just tell me what to do, how to do it and when to do it, and I’m good to go.’
What they don’t realise is that in order to even make up that sentence, they are being creative! Our thoughts about what we will do today are creative. Our conversations are creative. The very ability to walk through life is a series of creative masterpieces.
I wonder as I write, if we were to really believe that we were all innately creative, what happens to all that natural creativity when we’re put on the spot. You know, when someone says ‘So what can we create from this’, or ‘Mum I’m bored, give me something fun to do’ (ok, I've been guilty of offering dishes as a creative idea). Or what about that piano lesson you knew was coming… 'Now it’s your turn to improvise!’ Some of us experience a hit of adrenaline; fight or flight. Some of us just resign to the creative block.
I’d like to amble through one thought that might be responsible for sabotaging our creative courage.
The Comparison Trap
Have you ever been caught in the comparison trap?
‘What is the point in me doing that, when he does it so well?’
We live in such a competitive world. Instead of ‘thinking ourselves' out of the trap, I suggest we need to ‘be ourselves' out of the trap.
There is always someone who is better at something. We can think up a myriad of reasons (dare we call them excuses), as to why this could be; experience, age, opportunities, gifting… it’s a truly wonderful list! And we would be right, but it wouldn’t change the outcome. We would still freeze creatively because we feel inferior. Creativity has a very sensitive soul.
Liberation
What if this list was to become our shining existence! What if who I am at this very moment, all of my history to this point, all my personal quirks, gives me the privilege of presenting something entirely new to the world. The very fact that I am at a different part of the journey to everyone else gives me a simplicity that those further down the track have left behind. Yet the simplicity itself is the seed that will germinate into whatever I dream it to be. What if the combination of my particular set of opportunities, be it education or money or exposure or gifting, gives me such a unique approach, that I can guarantee that no-one else could have coaxed to the surface except me. Indeed, maybe the lack of these opportunities could lead me to create with such integrity, such purity and honesty, as to move those who hear it just a little closer to heaven!
Of all the leaves that fell today, not one is the same as another. But imagine that they were, or at least that there were only a few varieties. The carpet of colour, the kaleidoscopic depth of tones and shapes would not be ours to enjoy. Take a moment to notice the dance of sunlight captured behind each leaf, revealing it’s inner life source, giving it another dimension that is un-replicable and transient. The nuance of colour that is cast through the prism of moisture in the raindrops that fell with it, interacting with each leaf in that very moment. The turning of colour throughout the season, a disguised blessing from the previous harsh, cold snap. These are the circumstances in which it fell. Each a wonderful journey to celebrate, and to relish.
As we express ourselves through music, lets not relegate the experience to the few ‘experts’ for whom we respect and admire. Let’s love every contribution, every offering, every gift for what it is: our moment to make the world a richer place. Don’t give away your place in the Autumn fall.
Can you relate to the 'comparison trap'?
How do you avoid it?
Add your thoughts below.
