I enjoy watching an artist sketch a portrait at a street fair while enjoying the music from a musician playing on the corner. Walking by beautiful house gardens revealing summer’s arrival.
Artists, musicians, and creations of beauty are commonly thought of as being brought into this world by creative people. People that seem far different than you and I.
Have you ever asked yourself “can I create”? You know the stories. I am not an artist, musician or gardener. Working five days a week and enjoy being with my family when I am not. I like to read and go to Church every Sunday. My life is boring we declare.
To answer our original question, we first must ask what is the definition of “to create”. In a web search, the first entry I saw said “to bring something into existence”. And this got me thinking about our everyday lives.
Buying new furniture for the family room. Trying a new recipe in the kitchen. Solving a new problem at work. Meeting a new friend for coffee. Driving to Niagara Falls for the first time. Moving into a larger house. Changing jobs.
What do all of these things have in common? They didn’t exist in your life before you did them. You brought them into existence to become part of your life going forward.
Some of our choices and decisions bring new things, experiences, relationships or skills into your life that didn’t exist before. Your actions validated your ability to create. Yes, not in the romantic way we view creatives as artists.
But in a more fundamental way, that frees us to beter understand the hidden power of our choices and decisions. Bringing things into existence in our lives can be enlivening & refreshing.
It frees us to embrace opportunities, intentions, or challenges while understanding the sting of our failures vanish when you are able to withstand their disappointment as you bring “the next thing” into existence.
This tension between what is and bringing something into existence is where creatives thrive. The mistake we make, as non-artists, is that we don’t view our lives as having any tension. When in truth, it’s there the minute we commit with clarity, to whatever we hope to achieve.