THE CREATIVITY IMPERATIVE
Bill Gibbons
The creative process – a seemingly simple phrase, yet one that pervades human philosophies, religions, arts, psychology, and biology.
Aside from the drive to procreate to assure succeeding generations and the need to create shelter, both characteristics common to all species, the human impetus to create for the sake of the creation itself is singular among all species.
Most of us can identify others who exhibit a need to create that which is apart from their chosen professions. A banker welds metal sculpture in his spare time, a psychologist designs and knits fashionable sweaters for children, a car dealer also writes poetry, a professor of economics writes novels and short stories. Noted biochemist and professor, Isaac Asimov, was better known for his science fiction writing. Locally, retired Wicomico County building inspector, Grover Cantwell, has been creating striking art in watercolor for most of his life. The list goes on.
This "creativity imperative" is not a latter-day development. Invention (itself the result of a creativity imperative) of ostensibly time-saving devices through history frees us to pursue artistic hobbies, but it does not explain the inherent human need to create – it simply allows it. Cave paintings, dated as early as 40,000 years ago, exist in the El Castillo cave near Cantabria, Spain – and there are others. Although motivations for the paintings elude comprehension, I submit that, in large part, the motivation was the human need to create. Besides, regardless of the ultimate function of the paintings, the creative minds behind them cannot be ignored.
Granted, it is only the truly accomplished – and/or lucky – who can claim their creative activities as also their occupation. Stephen King, James Patterson, Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Pablo Picasso, and Mikhail Baryshnikov are a few fortunate examples, out of a human population in excess of seven billion on the planet.
Denial of an individual's creativity imperative carries its own consequences. There is a reason that child care facilities and schools set aside time for creative pursuits among students. Expressive arts, e.g., music, dance, literary arts, and visual arts, are used by institutions and private counselors to aid in therapy.
Beyond educational and formalized uses of creative therapy, there is much to recommend turning to such interests in our everyday lives. Painting, writing, dancing, and music afford distractions that can temper job stress, alleviate boring routines, or lessen family pressures, all sober realities of modern life.
This writer has, over the decades, delved into visual arts, literary arts, and inventions. Arguably, literary arts is the most basic, yet at the same time the highest, form of creative arts. With the simplest of implements, pen or pencil and paper, one can pour thoughts out from the dark recesses of the mind onto paper where they can be viewed in the light of day, examined, and reconciled.
We don't deny the existence of stress and strife in everyday life; we might benefit from acknowledging the creativity imperative within each of us and the balance it can bring to our lives.
