So what is Creativity Exactly?
And did high school polish it out of you?
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesise new things”. Steve Jobs
The ability to make connections between unrelated concepts, to put situations in a new perspective, to problem solve in ways that aren’t immediately obvious, to create something out of nothing, these are all facets of a creative mind. For some people, the creative process leads them on to create art or music or poetry or design, but for the majority, creativity can manifest itself in all areas of our daily lives.
The most creative people don’t necessarily have to “make” anything. They are living creative lives full of curiosity and making interesting connections. The great divide comes when people ignore or avoid their innate creativity because they don’t think of themselves as “artistic” and mistakenly think they have no place being “creative”.
“To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.” Osho
You can look at creativity from a pragmatic viewpoint like Steve Jobs, or take the more spiritual approach like Osho. For some, creativity is a way to make a living, or to solve everyday problems using lateral thinking. For others, it is their spark, their life force and their reason for being.
Once you start exploring the topic of creativity, you realise it means many things to many people, but one thing I do know to be true is that to stand outside the realm of art and think creativity is something that artistic people are “gifted” with is a mistake. Just as wonder and play are common to all young children, creativity is a common trait in all mankind, it’s just that some of us make better use of it than others.
So if we are born with an innate ability to be creative, where does it go? Why does it disappear in some and not in others? Sir Ken Robinson would argue, and many agree with him, that the structured education system polishes it out of us.
If the creative process relies on us being willing to make mistakes, and the education system requires us to always be right, then those two philosophies are fundamentally at odds.
For some people, they just don’t fit with the traditional education system and their ability to be creative remains intact. For others, their education and upbringing push their creative opportunities away and they “forget” how to be creative. A rare few are able to tell the difference and do well in the traditional education systems as well as retaining their creativity.
