Creative Life
Years ago, while working on my Ph.D., I studied creativity. I spent months in the dusty stacks* researching the concept and writing about eminently creative geniuses. My professor, a Harvard- educated, world-renowned creativity expert, told me I was smart. I believed her.
Only when I got down in the trenches as an artist did I realize I was not “smart.” I was a smarty pants. A showoff. Pontificating about creativity and actually living a creative life are as far apart as yellow and purple on the color wheel.
Living a creative life requires courage and elbow grease to bring forth hidden treasures that lie within. In other words, creative living equals enchantment, persistence, uncertainty, and vulnerability. It insists on heaps of unrequited hope—after all, hope is the fuel that feeds the flame of the human soul. It demands trusting yourself regardless of rejection, after rejection, after . . .
At times, creative’s commands fight each other. You feel like a hamster on a treadmill—going nowhere.
Perhaps, even worse, the creative goddess of success (whatever success means) might show up. Or, she might not. And that means you can’t count on her or attach personal pride to her whimsies.
Yet, for me, a creative life means living up to my potential through my artwork. The blatant truth is if I don’t live up to my potential, it will die with me. I’m starting to understand living a creative life (in my case creating artwork) is not reflected in the eye of the beholder. Instead, it lives in the soul of the creator.
Is living a creative life worth the effort? Bet your sweet booty it is—at least for me.
What about you?
*For those of you who aren’t familiar with life before Google and AI, the “stacks” were acres of dusty library shelves filled with volumes of research books that one located by consulting a card catalogue for call numbers that indicated the book’s location.
Hope
Judith Kolva, artist
