“I’m not an artist.”
“I’m not creative.”
“My friend is really creative.”
Almost all of us make statements like this at some point in our adulthood.
But as children, we naturally dance, act, draw, make silly faces, play dress up, and pretend we are fairies living in the woods. Somewhere along the way, something changes. Either we compared ourselves to others and decided they were creative and we were not, or someone told us that whatever creative thing we were doing was not good and so it no longer felt safe.
The latter happened in my life. I remember the moment so clearly. I was 15 years old and had been working hard on a figure drawing in art class. I’d been working on it for a long time and really loved what I was painting, but I felt a little frustrated because I could tell my proportions were off. I asked the teacher for help. She came over and very bluntly laughed at me and said, “Oh, this is terrible. You’re doing it all wrong.” Then without my permission, proceeded to take a black sharpie and drew directly over my artwork. I looked at her in silent shock and horror as my little teenage ego simultaneously encoded my subconscious with “I’m a terrible artist” and “How dare she touch this thing that was so important to me?” I know it sounds dramatic, but honestly, it felt dramatic. I walked out of the classroom and hid myself in the bathroom and cried.
Decades later, I still struggle with my own creativity. That moment with that crappy art teacher decades ago is when my creativity shifted from something that felt fun and natural to something that was labeled good or bad. I find it interesting that my entire childhood had been spent with my artist grandmother who supported us in all manner of self-expression. Little me spent hours writing poems and drawing mermaids and never thought twice about whether it was “good” or not. But something negative in the outer world made its way in during a tender moment, and then it no longer felt safe to be creative.
Whether you’ve experienced a moment like this or not, my point is that there is too much labeling of creativity as good or bad, and most people are creatively constipated. We all need to express ourselves. It is what keeps us healthy. We are meant to experience life and then express it. Joy, grief, silliness, heartbreak… it’s all meant to be felt and expressed, and eventually released so there’s space to feel the next thing. From a psychological standpoint, many dis-eases stem from us not being able to digest or express some challenging thing, so then it just stays stuck in the body and grows into something unhealthy.
Creativity is the very essence of who we are.
I’ll repeat:Creativity. Is. The. Very. Essence. Of. Who. We. Are.
Regardless of your personal spiritual or religious beliefs, I think we can all agree that there are universal questions none of us have answers to, but we do know that there is some creative force pulsating in all creation. You were created by the magic that produces life. We are all living, breathing, moving organisms pulsing with creative life force. There is no labeling of good and bad; we just are. We exist, therefore we are inherently creative.
We forget this regularly, of course. The world distracts us with constant dings of text messages and we feed ourselves the junk food of social media where we compare ourselves to unrealistic people and things all day long. No wonder it’s hard for us to remember that we are creativity in motion.
So, how to move beyond this?
To be honest, I’m deep in this process myself, but the word that comes forth over and over is courage. As e.e. cummings wrote, “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” “Why does this take courage?” you may ask. Great question. My opinion is that who you really are often doesn’t fit neatly into a societal mold of what is accepted, and we all want to feel loved, seen, understood, and accepted. It takes courage to say, “My truth, or my creative expression, looks like this.” Not everyone is going to like and accept us as we are. We will inevitably be labeled in some way. It takes great courage to express yourself anyway, and I believe this is where true freedom lives. The unlabeled play of creativity is where we become truly free.
I’m curious—what are your thoughts on creativity and courage? How do you express yourself? What experiences have you had to move through to stand in your own creative truth? We love hearing from our readers! You’re invited to email olivia@oliviapool.com and share.
