What is Creativity?

Antique Illustration, Artist Unknown

Rhythm and rhyme, poetry, painting and piano. These things I got from my mother. Order, practicality, patience, deliberation and self-reliance ~ these came from my father.  Sometimes the blending has an excellent, really pleasing effect. Other times it’s conflicted, my free spirit feeling trapped inside its Virgo shell.

But however these traits play out on any given day, (perhaps depending on the star’s alignment), I can’t imagine life without a pen for words, a pencil or brush for pictures, without the ability to make music, or dance my own dance. Maybe it’s DNA, maybe it’s God-given. All I know is that it’s all just there. Demanding my attention, every day, at all hours.

So at some point in life, I accept and embrace the call, resign to the destiny that DNA or God (or both) bestowed. I know it’s not a hobby, a fancy of youth, a moment in the sun. This thing called creativity throbs with every pulse. I choose to honor it, even though I’m not so sure the choice is mine, and even though it would be so much tidier to work at something with obvious beginnings and ends. But such, it seems, is not my fate.

Of course, I have no corner on this thing called creativity. There are many of you out there, and you know exactly what I’m talking about!

There are, however, many of you out there who also live and breathe creativity and (I think) don’t know it. You think it requires the painting of a picture, the writing of a story, the composing of a song, the designing of a home or the sculpting of stone into an angel. I don’t believe that it does.

What about the teacher who gets through to an otherwise struggling student, by using an original approach? What about the doctor who discovers a unique treatment? What about the accountant who produces an efficient software program? What about the farmer who figures how to grow a tastier tomato or develops a new fertilizer? What about the pilot who dreams of a better aircraft? What about the engineer, like my father, who measured things with facts and figures, and invented industry-changing processes?

I think that “this thing called creativity” runs through all our veins ~ it just manifests in very different ways. (Thank goodness for that!) And whether or not it’s nurtured  ~ and whether or not, like a muscle, it is used and strengthened or becomes limp from neglect ~ simply makes it seem more real or not.

© Patricia Saxton


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The Great Gift of Curiosity

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
~ Albert Einstein

I love this! The following is an inspiring lesson on the enormous value of curiosity and wonder, shared through a truly worthwhile video from a community-based online education group called Skillshare. Many thanks to the Skillshare folks for putting this out there!

If you have kids or young adults in your life, share it with them too. Share it with anyone who appreciates learning, life and the human potential, anyone who thinks they’ve “done it all”, and those who may have temporarily misplaced a passion for what makes things tick.

Above all, keep asking questions. Keep wonder alive!

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Palm-Reading

The palm-reader said I’ll live a very long, very healthy life.

This isn’t really news, as all the psychics I’ve known have said the same, but this one backed it up by mentioning that I inherited a “long-life gene”, which made it sound pretty official. And I have to say, whatever your feeling about these kinds of things, considering that my father is in a pretty remarkable 94th year, I think she could be on to something.

Of course, you never know. But the long-healthy-life concept is comforting, since I can’t imagine running out of things I want to do. I’ve got at least 6 more books in me, hundreds of art pieces, and who knows, maybe I’ll be discovered in my golden years and star in something fabulous on the silver screen. :  )

I like the idea that every day holds potential for something grand. Or even something that’s simply, thrillingly sweet. Or a kind and lovely gesture.

There’s just no end to what you can learn and discover. Not to mention there’s still much of the world I’ve yet to see. There are mountains to climb and streams to ford! (well, okay, apparently The Sound of Music hijacked my thought process for a second there…)

How can anyone, ever, really, I mean really, be bored?

Sure, now and then we can feel dull. We can get the blues. We can get discombobulated or all worked up in a twist from life’s challenges. Maybe feel discontent, or anxious or scared or like you want to put your fist through a wall.

But you tough it out. You laugh, you cry. You make it through. The sun rises.

With all life’s quirks and curves and turns, colors and personalities and wonders ~ just imagine all you can do and be and give and share. How cool is that?

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Unfolding

Probably because I’m craving some time with brush in hand in front of a fresh canvas, I’ve pulled up an old drawing that reminds me of art for art’s sake. It also reminds me of the roots of what I do, and the kind of invisible forces that have driven me in the directions I’ve gone.

I say “invisible forces” because you can’t explain “why” you may have spent days drawing a larger than life Iris, or why it was an Iris you chose, not a face or an apple or a street scene. Of course there had to be a point of intellectual decision along the way, but you can’t necessarily say why in that moment it was a pencil you used, not a pen and not a brush.

Because time then becomes suspended  ~  the same as it does for a musician, a dancer, a poet; conscious thoughts dissolve, almost as if your being, through the act of creating, becomes a meditation.

© Patricia Saxton

And it is this piece pulled up today, I believe, because it also speaks to me now, years later, of gentle unfoldings, as opposed to dramatic, coarse unravelings. It speaks to me of a natural grace within life ~ one perhaps we all wish to nurture and maintain but feel we seldom do. It whispers of quiet gestures and grand plans, and of patience, and the knowing that all things blossom best with care and water and light.

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Peace Prayer

Week #57 / 52 Weeks of Peace (squared) / © Patricia Saxton

Under one sky
Our blood runs red
Our eyes see, our feet walk
Our hearts beat.

We love, we laugh
We grieve.

We hope.

Red, white, black, yellow
We circle and dance,
Fight and rejoice,
Dream and breathe
And raise our voice

For peace.

~ P. Saxton

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