If you’ve grown up and pushed your creativity aside, you’ve not been kind to yourself. Sadly, a part of you is almost dead!
Creativity, in its many forms, is a beautiful extension of who we are.
Some of my friends don’t consider themselves creative.
“I can’t even draw a stick person,” they say.
But, drawing and writing are only two of the thousand ways. You don’t have to write stories about dragons and fairies to use your imagination.
Making a bow for a girl’s hair is using your creative skills.
Let’s think about this a little more.
Kids are the greatest at imagining things. Being a teacher, I’ve heard some strange imagined things. My 5-year-old niece constantly says: pretend we’re on a cloud ….pretend someone’s chasing us…pretend this is lava…
The word pretend seems to precede everything.
I remember one of my students who almost daily said his favored word butt-load. A butt-load of rain…there was a butt-load of people…I had a butt-load of homework.
I recall asking him one day what a butt-load was.
He said it was a lot.
Eh, okay, I replied.
He also was the same student that went all out when we read a play in class. I’ve got to say, it was a butt-load of fun listening to him.
Quite the actor he was.
We all are beautiful expressions of the Creator, so it’s a natural part of us, and if we don’t see it as valuable, we let it lie dormant.
Dormant like a favorite lost book in the attic covered in years of dust.
You still have it because you didn’t want to get rid of it so you tucked it away.
I never realized this until I rekindled my love for sketching and after about 25 years of dormancy, I finally dusted it off.
I would have not done it had my husband never urged me to. He made little comments here and there, over a span of a few years about it.
I finally took it to heart and picked up my pencil and paper one day and started doodling-and never stopped.
I don’t know how to describe the feeling of sketching something now.
I am sure it is the same feeling as when a pianist rediscovers how the keys of a piano sound after years of neglect.
How the notes penetrate the soul. Indescribable.
We are all different in the way we create. I once listened to a storyteller who came to a college class tell how his mother ended up cutting her cat’s tail off with a pair of hand clippers by accident as she trimmed her bushes.
We were horrified.
We didn’t realize he made up the story until our professor told us he was a professional storyteller. We all had a good laugh and felt immediate relief once we knew the incident didn’t really happen.
Now, I hope you’re thinking about you.
I recently visited a 3rd-grade classroom chit-chatting about creativity. (really! we did chit-chat because the students talked as much as I did!)
When I asked the students how they liked to be creative, they all shared with much enthusiasm.
But, when I came to the last kid, he said, “I don’t know.”
He genuinely didn’t know what he liked. He never thought about it, I guess.
Only two seconds passed because that was all the time that was needed in such a lively classroom when the whole class yelled out, “He’s a comedian, he likes to tell jokes!”
I replied, “See. Your class knows you better than you do.”
Some sew. Some tell tales. Some invent jokes.
But what about those that are in their quiet corner of the yard growing their cucumbers and basil, tulips and lilies? Some grow.
I’d like to know if this little essay has you thinking about your creative side, and I hope I convinced you to dust it off if it needs it. Do you have it stuffed in the attic?
If so, find it and share it…and then let me know! I’d love to know what it is.
Love,
Sharon