all i want to be

via clifton burt

The word creativity has been so negatively loaded for me. (And don’t even get me started on the word ‘art’.)

It meant being either productive or not productive. Making a good product or bad product. There was the fear of trying new things and making mistakes, even though I told myself I just wasn’t interested in pursuing whatever-it-was-I-secretly-thought-I’d-suck-at. Things like painting and drawing and singing and making music were off limits. They’re for the people who have talent. So I just stayed in my safe corner of sewing and graphic design, believing that’s the entirety of my creative thing. The entirety of me.

And these ways of thinking about creativity are so prevalent, or at least they was when I – and probably you, lovely reader – were growing up, when we were forming our ideas about ourselves and our capabilities and about the world.

For a very long time I thought that I’d gotten away unscathed, that I wasn’t holding back on any of my me-ness and creative expression. I didn’t remember any nasty stories about a piece of my childhood work being cruelly shut down, or of my parents telling me in no uncertain terms that aspiring to a creative career was preposterous.

I know now that it was the subtleties that had a detrimental effect.

Like how I never had a creative role model because my dad’s creativity was completely tied up in his job, and my mum put 98% of her creativity on permanent hold after she had kids. I didn’t know that you could just try new stuff and not need to know what you were doing, not need to do it for any other reason than because you feel like it.

Like how even though my parents said, ‘We just want you to find a job that makes you happy,’ I also got the clear message from them that if you don’t make the monies, you struggle, and you aren’t happy. So following the logic I grew up with, really, ‘a job that makes you happy’ meant ‘a job that makes you plenty of money’. And so, even though I would have scoffed at this at the time, everything I did was tinged with this money-making idea, including my creativity. Despite my better judgment as I grew older, my ingrained beliefs told me that if it wasn’t potentially profitable, it was pointless.

There’s no blame here. They did the best they could, just like I’m doing with my daughter.

When you think of creativity in terms of product and quality, it shuts you down.

It makes you less expressive, more possessive. Closed instead of open. Resistant instead of willing. Suppressing instead of open-hearted.

Creativity is not an activity we partake in sometimes. It is who we are. It is how we experience life, our existing inclinations and our way of interacting with everything we come into contact with. We have a choice to express one or more of these aspects of ourselves, or not to. Sometimes we’re not ready, and that’s okay. Sometimes what’s needed is to take a smaller, safer risk. Sometimes what’s needed is to get in touch with our own enjoyment and fascinations, to do a thing simply for ourselves until we learn we’re allowed to.

For me, there is a comfort in the knowledge that to get in touch with my creativity, I don’t need to snatch some brilliant spark of insight out of thin air and get it down so it becomes a something. Because that sounds difficult and flukey, if I do manage it. And the idea of needing to make it into a thing implies that the enjoyment of the experience isn’t enough.

All I need to do is pay attention to what’s going on inside me. Maybe I want a bath. Maybe I want to paint. Maybe I want to cry. Maybe I want to dance. What do I already know that I need? Not what I think I need or what should work if I was a slightly better person, but what is my body sincerely, lovingly calling me to do?

There is comfort in knowing that if creativity is simply being me, there is no right or wrong or good or bad. I can’t be myself wrong. Even my resistance, my creative blocks, my nervousness, my ignorance, even those are simply what I am in that moment. And they will always be there because I’m not ever going to reach a perfect existence.

I went without ‘making art’ for a good while this year.

My creative abilities came into question. Am I just not disciplined enough? Why can’t I finish ANYTHING I start? If I can’t make anything ever again without an incredible struggle, will I ever be able to have a fulfilling creative career, or am I doomed to wither away in a soul-sucking series of jobs?

It didn’t occur to me until later that even though I didn’t make a dress or a story or painting or some other piece of artwork, I was still being creative every day. It was the way I helped a friend with her problem, how I arranged my things on the dresser, the meal I put together with leftovers, the instinctive way I collected wardrobe pieces, books and information.

The only thing that stops these things from being completely creatively fulfilling is the belief that they’re not enough. Not profitable, not appreciated by others, not special, not worthy.

These are lies.

Pleasure is enough. Enjoyment is enough. A perfect moment is enough. Personal satisfaction is enough.

Actually, they are more than enough.

They are divine.