Trusting that your creativity matters.
Your creativity matters. It’s really, really important.
I wonder what parts of you believe this, and what parts don’t. I often am “of two minds” about prioritizing creativity, are you?
Well, we do get conflicting messages. Creativity is celebrated on posters in a classroom, especially when they show a white guy who invented a billion-dollar product in his garage.
But if we’re not developing billion-dollar ideas? Well then shouldn’t you be doing laundry instead of wasting your time with–is that knitting or crochet?
Look, we’ve inherited some unhelpful ideas about work and play and rest and productivity. Lots of people write about that, and they’ve got lots of good things to say. *
But one part of prioritizing creativity that very few people talk about is trust. How much do you really trust “other people?” How much do you truly trust yourself regarding your creative pursuits? Most of us probably weren’t shown how to practice trust; many of us may have been taught we shouldn’t practice it.
Lack of trust leads us into fetishizing work for its own sake, as described by David Graeber in his excellent book, Bullsh!t Jobs.
“The underlying assumption is that if humans are offered the option to be parasites, of course they’ll take it. In fact, almost every bit of available evidence indicates that this is not the case.”
There’s this moral imperative that if we’re idle, well…you know the saying about idle hands and the devil’s favorite leisure activities. There’s this belief that if we don’t force ourselves to do things that feel really, really hard, that we’ll be led astray. Just how it is.
I don’t buy it. For one thing, from the outside, creativity often looks “idle.” All the wise folks I’ve read who talk about creative process remind us that creativity requires space, play, rest, and time to marinate without us actively managing the process. It often involves curating a deliberate mess. It may look like we’re doing nothing at all, *gasp!*
“Creativity is about receptivity, and that doesn’t happen until we let go of ourselves for a while.”
On the level of people’s inherent nature, Graeber observes (and I concur) that people generally want to spend the time they are given in life doing something that matters to them. Most of us do not actually dream of being parasites.
Have you ever noticed how willing you are to work hard for something you care about?
We expend a lot of effort trying to keep people from being parasites, which is wild given the fact that very few people actually want to be one. We perpetuate the idea that to combat our inherently lazy nature, we should work very, very hard and judge people very, very harshly about their perceived effort. This is lack of trust in human nature. We turn this thinking on ourselves and judge what our effort looks like and the results we achieve very, very harshly. Lack of trust in ourselves.
No wonder I hear people say, “I’m just not creative,” or, “I wish I could…”, or “maybe later…” when we’ve learned not to trust our own inherent natures and our own desires.
Can you imagine what it would be like if we all were encouraged to figure out who we are at our best, and what we do our best and how best to bring that into the world? I mean, if we weren’t deliberately stifling ourselves, how much more would we add to the world?
Call me naive if you like, but I don’t think we’d have too many people who really, truly dream of screwing each other over. Not if we’re being true to ourselves.
Creativity, as Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, “gives life.” It’s not a book about creativity, but throughout her anthropological and archetypal explorations in Women Who Run With the Wolves, she repeatedly returns to the importance of creativity as an expression of a person’s essence and vitality. At one point, she provides a beautiful description of it as a river that we each contribute to and are nourished from, as a collective.
“Creating one thing at a certain point in the river feeds those who come to the river, feeds creatures far downstream, yet others in the deep. Creativity is not a solitary movement. That is its power. Whatever is touched by it, whoever hears it, sees it, senses it, knows it, is fed. That is why beholding someone else’s creative word, image, idea, fills us up, inspires us to our own creative work. A single creative act has the potential to feed a continent.”
We are alive when we’re creating something. Creative contribution gives us belonging. It makes a place for our deepest essence and vitality, the parts of us we really want to share, and are happy to work hard for.
We do our best work when it’s something aligned with our nature, our desires, our gifts. That’s why creativity matters, because creativity is an expression of us trusting and loving ourselves, and that brings out our BEST
One sign that we’re not trusting our natures and our creative desires is thinking that our best contribution comes from following the script of the roles we were handed. Make no mistake, if you have received the role of, say, mother, you can make amazing creative contributions to the world inside that role. It’s not that having roles is a problem; we’re trying to have a society here, right? But if the expectations you receive with that role stifle your essence and vitality, then it’s time to consider whether they might fit together in a way that serves better.
Too often, we don’t choose to trust that we can write our own script. Here’s what it might look like when we choose a pre-written script over our essence and vitality:
Jealousy
Snapping
Debilitating self-criticism
Low Energy
Feel free to add more in the comments; this is certainly an incomplete list.
“And yet, a woman may do this to herself by talking away her ideas until all the arousal is gone from them, or by not putting her foot down about people creeping off with her creative tools and materials, or by the simple oversight of not buying the right equipment to execute the creative work properly, or by stopping and starting so many times, by allowing everyone and their cat to interrupt her at will, that the project falls into a shambles.”
The thing is, we need a minimally supportive environment to be our creative best. We probably need to create this for ourselves, because few of us can expect a pre-packaged supportive environment to be handed to us.
We need a bit of cleverness to figure out how our creative time balances with the very real responsibilities we have–which, by the way, also reflect our values and should be honored. We need to develop some assertiveness to ask for what we need from others.
These are terrifying tasks if we don’t trust our worth, our wisdom, and our work we’re here to do.
I heard it said that any external change must be preceded by internal work. If you want to figure out how your desires fit into your real life, cultivating the trust that this matters might be a good first step.
You can start by remembering how much your creativity contributes to the river that nourishes everyone else.
If you need more support, this is exactly what I’m here for, to help the makers and givers figure out how to fit their creative dreams into the reality of their lives. Please shoot me a DM on Instagram or click the “Let’s Connect” button at the top of the page to email me. I want to hear what’s going on for you!
* Burnout by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski is one resource. Also, consider searching social media for folks talking about disability and chronic illness for perspectives on hustle culture that are much needed. That’s just a starting point!