Many people identify the concept of “creativity” with the arts and the artists. However, creativity relates to life itself and thus relates to everyone. Even though there are no recipes about how to conquer it, there are ways to get closer to what I like calling “creative worldview” or “creative way of encountering life”. In the following I will talk about those ways and in general about the meaning of creativity..
How can creativity be defined? In Wikipedia it is written: “Creativity is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts. An alternative conception of creativity is that it is simply the act of making something new.”
This definition generates automatically some questions. How new can be an idea or a concept based on existing ones? And how far the association of existing ideas can be really considered as something new? And namely when we talk about creativity, do we only mean ideas and concepts? Isn’t this very abstract? How about our tangible everyday life?
Someone else could ask from which point of view I approach the subject, adding that this definition does not take into consideration the X theory or that according to the approach of the behavioral psychology, more parameters have to be considered in order to have a satisfactory definition of creativity. All these questions are reasonable, considering that creativity is a complex phenomenon and a study matter of many different sciences. However, the reference to the different scientific approaches and their conclusions is beyond the goals of this article. Even though among those conclusions are included theories about the origin of creativity, my attempt to answer this question won’t be based on any of these theories. Instead I will try to draw an answer, based on the creative source within myself!
Someone could say: “Creativity comes from within ourselves and is only born when we get closer to our true self. This is correct for sure. But who is our true self and how close to our true self can we get? Someone could say: Creativity comes right at the moment we stop pursuing being creative.
More than a few times I have dreamed of something and what I dreamed of, inspired me to write a poem. It could be a picture, it could be a verse, could even be a whole poem, which I dreamed before writing it down on paper. Many people believe that dreams have some kind of explanation. And there are many people who have found inspiration in their dreams. Has it ever happened to you being too worried about something and unable to find a solution and suddenly while being just about to sleep the solution popped up in your mind? It is not accidental that they advice the students of a foreign language, for example, to get in contact with their learning object before going to sleep. What is this that sometimes changes in our state of mind making us more receptive to learning or even more inspired? Is it perhaps the contact to our sub-consciousness? Is it the activation of other brain parts that make us more creative?
It is unquestionable that sometimes we feel more creative than others. This relates to everyone, artists and no artists. If you are aware of the moments that you were more creative, you may have felt, in those moments, more complete and happy. You may have felt a greater harmony with yourself and the world around you. Having had such an experience you may have reached this conclusion: The creative state of mind brings also an experience of internal bliss, which, however, cannot be acquired through pursuing.
So, if creativity does not only relate to artists but everyone, what aspects of our life does it concern? Does it concern only our professional life or our private life as well? For example giving solution to a problem requires creativity. Decision making requires creativity. Organizing a trip, a dinner at home or even organizing a night out, also requires creativity. So, it seems that creativity relates to all aspects of our life, from the simplest one to the most complicated. And even if the definition of what exactly is creativity is a little vague, one thing is unambiguous: Creativity is this ingredient that makes the difference between the exquisite and the non-inspiring, between the pioneer and the trite. And if we talk about creativity in a greater sense, it is the creative worldview that makes the difference between those who build in their lives and those who destroy, between those who walk inspiringly and those who slave away in their everyday life.
But what does the creative worldview mean? The creative worldview is a luminous worldview. It is a positive attitude towards life. It means building and not destroying. It means being in love with life and living each day as if it was your last day. It also means seeing poetry and beauty in everything, being true towards yourself and others and full of compassion. The creative worldview means seeking harmony, radiating positive energy, shining like gold, making everything you touch shine like gold. Perhaps, everything positive that you can think of, can be included to illustrate the meaning of the creative worldview.
When such a creative worldview embraces a soul, it has a direct effect on a person’s creativity. It gives to a person’s creativity a light touch. It cultivates her (the creativity) in harmony to the universe and the beauty. A person who has conquered a creative worldview experiences in a creative way every moment of his/ her life. He becomes the so called life’s artist. For such a person life itself becomes an art object. It becomes the shapeless clay to shape and transform into a piece of art. Life itself becomes the material of her artistic creation. This person is given the choice and if is given the talent as well, he or she can turn life into a piece of art.A wonderful and enviable piece of art. A piece of art, which will inspire other life artists as well. The life artist inspires by example. He doesn’t need to be engaged in any specific form of art, although he might seek to express himself through art. And when she does, she will really breathe life into any piece of art, she puts her hand to. He will breathe life into the poem and into the painting. She will breathe life into the sculpture and into its photographic representation. And everything will flow naturally. Everything will be true.
Have you ever fallen in love with your creativity? When you felt her (the creativity) for the first time for example? May be now while I am trying to define her? If yes you might wonder how to develop her even further. The answer is not difficult. Going towards the direction of the creative worldview would be sufficient. Perhaps the cultivation of the creative worldview inside of us is the key of coming into contact with an endless source of inspiration. Someone might ask: Doesn’t the concept of the creative worldview include an element of subjectivity? Doesn’t it mean different things for each of us and aren’t there different paths for conquering the creative worldview? Each one’s path towards the creative worldview might differ for sure. Yet how important is when someone walks this path consciously. And there is something that serves as a compass for someone to know whether he or she is on the right track or not: How much harmony he feels within himself. How much united she feels with the world around her.
A creative worldview is thus the key to a creative life. It is the key for developing our creativity in all aspects of our life. It has to do with the way we deal with things. It has to do with the way we deal with our life and the people around us. The improvement of ourselves and the development of virtues are also somehow connected to the creative worldview. We have seen that the creative worldview relates to everybody and not only to artists.
Perhaps now the answer to the question of why it is important to develop a creative worldview is obvious. Let us try imagining a beautiful moment of our lives, for example a moment of peace enjoying a beautiful sunset. We feel so happy in this moment that we want to embrace the sun. We want to paint the moment. We want to draw a poem. Have you ever experienced such a moment? It might be the best way to comprehend the state of mind of a person who has cultivated inside of him the creative worldview. If all the people could find themselves in such state of mind, how the world would look like? Wouldn’t be more beautiful?
Let us also imagine a bad moment of our lives. A moment, in which nothing makes sense, we are full of malice, having enough with our lives. A rainy and cloudy moment. In exactly this moment is even more obvious whether someone has really cultivated inside of him a creative worldview. Life is a bittersweet melody, sings a singer. When we can view the rainbow emerging behind rattle and hum, when we can turn malice into compassion and pain into tolerance, then we may have really touched the sky and we have embraced a creative worldview.