Perhaps the most insidious resistance to embracing creativity is the fear of being ridiculed by those around us.
Why would you want to think creatively when thinking creatively might make us aware of things/patterns/possibilities we had not previously noticed forcing us to take (or NOT) certain actions that might disrupt our lives, alarm our loved ones or appear irrational to the rest of the world?
We all have ideas, all the time. How many of us have looked at paintings and thought, gee, with some drawing classes, I reckon I could do something like that! Or, my life is so interesting someone should make a movie out of it! Or drank a fresh juice at an expensive eatery and thought, damn, my orange, grapefruit, turmeric and lime juice is so much better than this, I should start a business! If you embraced creativity and started to notice opportunities, embrace artistic impulses and start, as Madeleine L’Engle put it, disturbing the universe, you never know what could happen…and that freaks us out!
What if what we try doesn’t work and it ends up being rubbish? Somehow it seems better to just stay safe & comfortable and keep telling ourselves: “I don't have a creative bone in my body!” or my favourite: “I’m too old to go in that direction now, this is what I know, I’ve trained and studied and am experienced in this, I can’t suddenly become a beginner in that!
Julia Cameron who wrote The Artist’s Way, a useful creativity recovery program, has a great response when people ask:
“Do you know how old I’ll be by the time I learn to play the piano, guitar, saxophone, sing, draw, cook, dance, program computers, design furniture, write songs, make airplane models, do stand up comedy, make films, take good photos …(insert any number of possibilities here)?
She tells them:
“Yes… the same age you will be if you don’t!”
Isn’t that a fact?!
We loved putting paint on the blank canvasses with Rebecca Cool at the last Edgewalkers Creativity & Walking Retreat in Margaret River