85. To Be Creative

You’re just living your life when, suddenly, you have an idea. The idea feels weighty because it’s entirely new and different. The more you think about it, the more important and exciting it seems. You play with it in your mind and you begin to imagine what you could do with it.

And then you get drawn back into the activity of daily life. Reminded of all the things you have to do and all the things you want to do, you quickly lose interest in your idea. When you do happen to think of it, you tell yourself it’s impossible to do anything with it, and the idea loses its lustre. You eventually decide to let it go.

But by abandoning your idea, you limit yourself. You allow your judgment of the relative value of the idea to prevent your creative intuitions from surfacing. If you’re able to notice this, you have a chance to release yourself from this judgment and allow your creativity to take the lead.

The form of your new creation is not important. You might draw a picture. You might write a few lines of verse. You might build a small object out of scraps. It doesn’t have to be flashy or complicated. The point is simply to allow yourself to imagine and create.

The fate of your creation is also unimportant. You don’t need to publish it. You don’t need to share it with the world. You don’t even need to show it to anyone at all. Sharing isn’t what makes the creative act worth doing. It is always worth doing, and it requires no justification.

Every moment of creativity enables your freedom to grow. It grants you an open and playful space away from the regimented structure of daily life. It allows you to put your judgments aside and take a break from self-evaluation. It gives you an opportunity to see judgment and even reason itself as tools you can pick up when needed, and not as overseers that control your every move.

It’s exactly this kind of freedom that you can gradually incorporate into your entire life. And that’s also what it is to allow joy in every moment: to be free, to be playful, to be creative.