How many times have I heard that? As a writer, many, many times and often from the most surprising people. It never fails to amaze me that people who don’t think of themselves as creative are many times the most creative individuals I know. They just don’t indulge in activities that the world looks at as artistic - therefore they don’t count.
Not true. I’m convinced that everyone has a creative side, because what is that after all? It is simply the ability to imagine something that you can’t yet see, hear, feel or taste – something that your senses haven’t yet experienced. Well, everyone does that in some form or another.
The housewife who wonders what rosemary would do to the wine sauce and then tries it, is opening a whole new channel of taste experience for at least herself. The scientist who suddenly envisions a new connection between two previously unconnected properties has just used her imagination and if that connection truly exists she has just created the awareness of it. How about the guy stuck by the side of the road with a broken accelerator linkage who then wanders around pacing until he finds an old piece of a spring and fashions a temporary fix?
All these people are creative. They just don’t access that part of themselves to paint or dance or write. They don’t live an artistic life.
I dearly wish those who labeled themselves as uncreative would throw that tag away.
They would be giving themselves a gift – the gift of allowing themselves to play with that part of their brain that imagines without judgment.
What pleasure could that bring them? Who knows? But wouldn’t it be a wonderful experiment?
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