“Art is a wound turned into light.” -Georges Braque
Creativity is the human potential we are provided, which allows our psyche to process and transform the dark recesses of our minds. When we bring our struggles with relationships or even just a painful incident in our days into the light of form we contact the deepest and most powerful safety valve we are programmed with. Whether it be movement, song, writing or art, our acts of creative improvisation bring us back to our essential nature.
Einstein was one of many who knew that imagination was more important than knowledge. As humans we are drawn to play and identify at our core with the urge for freedom. The freedom that many of us long for, that we realize that we need, lives beyond worldly success. The fun that we took for granted in our early years, the urge to sing or dance and the ease with which we followed our impulses are all part of the reflection of self that we can lose touch with during the aging process.
A dear friend who died a couple of years ago is someone who taught me a lot about the urge and freedom to play. Halloween always reminds me of how much I miss him, because he loved the play. He would wear costumes randomly at any and all occasions. His passion for the fun of being a tomato or a priest was infectious and gave us all permission to think of not only who we should be, but how we wanted to be as well.
Giving yourself permission to sing in the shower, to dance around the living room or even office bathroom is an easy start to igniting the spirit of the creative to awaken in you. Everyone has this urge and capacity to play, although many of us learned early and well that fitting in was more important than finding out what it meant to be yourself. The first and overriding premise of the discovery and the activity is that it matters little what you do, the gift was in how it is done. Honoring the process that encourages playing, experimenting and expressing ourselves is the win.
For me, I find out more about who I am when I write. I see my strengths and weaknesses in the context of a larger fabric of my life and what I am working towards. Recording how we see our lives, what we are learning from life, witnessing in our own development is how we set down in memory and for those who know us, our private literature of our lives. We are better when we allow our lives to create, when our acts of creation encourage us to play, and when our play offers us the essence of what it is to be freely oneself. All good markers for a life well lived.
