Connecting With Our Creativity: Part 1 – Defining Creativity

Think left and think right. Think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up, if only you try!

-Dr. Seuss

I never thought of myself as a “creative” (when did this adjective become a noun by the way??). In my mind, creative people carried bohemian purses with lots of fringe, purchased canvasses in bulk at Ben Franklin Crafts, wore cool hipster glasses and spent a lot of time in quirky independent coffee shops and book stores.

They created thought provoking paintings, composed tear inducing musical scores, and signed up to teach arts and crafts at Kidz Church.

My first inkling that maybe I did have a creative bone in my body began to surface when I made purple mashed potatoes for dinner around the age of 10. How proud I was to add present a beautiful steaming bowl of Blue #1 and Red #40 food color laden potatoes to my family! They oooed and awwwed as I basked in their generous praise.

Was I the first one to think up purple mashed potatoes? I had no idea, and I certainly did not care.

(Side note: Many years later I distinctly remember eating purple poi on my first trip to Oahu and thinking they stole my idea.)

What I have come to understand is that every single person on earth is a creative. We are all made in the image of God, the Creator.

If that’s the case, why do we tell ourselves we aren’t very creative? What holds us back?

In this series, we are exploring things that hold us back from fully engaging our creativity and why it’s so worth pushing through.

Our Definition of Creativity

How we define something forges the path for how we engage it. Many of us define creativity as some vague characteristic both inherent and confined to the world of right brained artists and musicians.

I love Wikipedia’s more generous definition:

Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something somehow new and somehow valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a printed literary work, or a painting).

Urban Dictionary ties creativity to playfulness in this definition:

Playfulness

Playing childishly with obvious, known or old information and ideas can produce something new and great. This is creativity. It is the engine of imagination and the keel of not just science and art, but all intelligence, problem solving and dealing with life in general. Every child is born creative. Its our key challenge to help our kids preserve their creativity into adulthood.

When we expand how we think about creativity, we can see it thriving everywhere we look:

• Bent over a birthday cake, with frosting and sprinkles.
• Peering into a microscope in the laboratory.
• Kneeling in the garden, spring seedlings in hand.
• Gathered around conference tables and Zoom calls.
• Sketching building plans at an architect’s drafting table.
• Performing an opening act at a comedy club.
• Bringing order to a long neglected linen closet.
• Searching for unique perspectives behind a camera.

What if we changed our definition of “creative people” to mean “every human walking around this earth and most especially me”?

What would happen if we boldly claimed our creativity as a crucial part of our identity?

Would we start to see parts of ourselves come alive that have been long buried? Might we re-discover our curiosity, our wonder, our imagination?

What are your earliest memories of creating? Share with us in the comments!

Sending love to all you creatives this week,

Alicia