When was the last time you made something for fun? Not because you had to, not because you needed to make money, not because your kid needed help with a school project, but a time when you sat down, gathered a few materials, and decided to scratch the itch of an idea?
As a child making things was as instinctive to me as breathing. Sleepovers were always filled with various creations – though never with an adult guiding or prescribing it. I remember once spending the night at a friend’s house and carefully filling a paper cup with dirt on a plastic spoon, packing it down, finding the perfect small branch to press into it, outlining its sticks with glue and glitter and finally adding tiny paper ornaments. Other times we made stained glass windows from tinfoil, plastic wrap and sharpies, smeared pastels into sunsets, or made elaborate shoebox houses for sparkly plastic fishing worms we’d stolen from my uncle’s tackle box and adopted as pets. We tucked them into narrow beds and pillows made from folded toilet paper squares, hung tiny pictures on the walls and installed patches of soft green moss collected from the yard as carpet.
As I grew, one of my favorite things to do as a tween and teen was to draw, sitting on my bedroom floor listening to music. In this solitude my brain would reach a relaxed place of peace. I could sit for hours singing quietly and sketching. In high school I enjoyed painting and drawing with new media like charcoal, prismacolors and chalk. In college I tried photography and loved the experience of peering at slides for the first time on a light table. And while I continued dabbling in creating what I considered artwork as I entered working adulthood, the time I allowed myself to play in this way became less and less. At some point in my twenties I must have decided that I had officially grown up and packed it all away.
Sometime in my early thirties, I remember staring at a pair of adirondack chairs in our yard that had degraded after years of Texas sunshine. I glanced at a can of leftover paint on our porch, and in that moment I envisioned those chairs taking on a new life. I painted them bright blue in the summer heat.
It took a while for me understand a deeper truth in that experience with the chairs. It represented what has remained true across the arc of my lifetime: I thrive when I create. I love the sense of ease that fills me up when I’m completely absorbed and time passes in a blink.
I love the satisfaction of seeing and holding a finished piece, whether it’s drawing, writing, knitting, painting, growing plants, editing a photo, or even tasting a recipe infused with the essence of a memory, person or experience. The following words surfaced in my mind one day when I tried to explain it to someone else:
Busy hands. Quiet mind. Happy heart.
That’s the best way I know how to describe how I feel when I make stuff.
Every year my maker interests continue to evolve. I went through a hat making phase, a tincture and tea making phase, a fermentation phase, a salve and lotion making phase, and I’m still enjoying my nature photography and gardening phase. I’ve played with water color paintings of birds in my yard, sketches of plants, and consider writing here an act of creation. Each of these activities take anywhere from 5 minutes to several hours, days or months. They can take as long or as little as I have to give. But what I’m working on doesn’t seem to matter – if I’m simply making something, my brain gets quiet and my heart opens up.
Creativity is a source of play, and play is not something to take lightly in our lives. According to authors Scott Barry Kaufman & Carolyn Gregoire of the book Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind, “adults who are more playful report feeling less stressed, being better able to cope with stress, and having greater life satisfaction and other positive outcomes.” Furthermore, time spent playing contributes to the growth of a flexible brain that is poised for problem solving. In short, play and creativity are vehicles for humans to build the muscle that researcher Dr. Brené Brown calls resilience.
So why do so few of us identify with having a creative process, and of the ones who do, why do even fewer share their creations or ideas with others? Well, according to Kaufman and Gregoire, specifically when it comes to the sharing: there are risks.
Despite all of the new ideas, inventions, scientific advances, artistic movements and spiritual growth that have come from the shoulders of relentless pursuers of ideas, it turns out that a lot of fellow humans don’t like it when we follow our noses off the beaten path – at least not initially. We live in a society that rewards conformity but needs creativity to survive. And to make matters more complicated, “It is often uncertainty that stimulates the search for and generation of creative ideas, but it is also our fear of uncertainty that renders us less able to recognize creative ideas.”
We are most comfortable accepting creativity from others after an idea has become familiar with repetition, normalized and already withstood tests of time and judgement. In other words, being vulnerable in front of others feels unsafe. “By definition, any work that is considered avant-garde is initially rejected, until it earns critical approval, becomes mainstream, and is in turn eventually uprooted by something new… It’s usually only after an idea has gained acceptance and recognition that we applaud the idea and its creator.” As a culture, most of us prefer to avoid associating with the boldest pioneers following unusual paths, and we especially want to avoid the discomforts associated with becoming one ourselves.
“There’s a high price to pay for being creative – tireless work, solitude and isolation, failure, and the risk of ridicule and rejection. The reality of creative work is that most artists will never sell their pieces, most actors and musicians will never make it big, most writers will never pen bestsellers, most start-ups will end in failure, and most scientists will never make earth-shattering discoveries…it’s a price that most of us don’t actually want to pay.“ Is it any wonder that we end up becoming and raising humans afraid to share and create?
I wonder how many innovators never heard a single clap of applause? How many people died before their ideas were acknowledged? And who might have changed the world for the better had they not been afraid to speak up? We’ll never really know.
A small minority of the ones who were brave enough to bring their creations to life will end up with a seat at the table of power, in the proverbial room where it happens. As for the rest of us who create without an audience, we are simply stewards of ideas, feelings, and states of mind, tasked with releasing creations and thoughts into our own little corners of the world, freed from the dendritic tangles of time only to have them shapeshift into new forms, often with new keepers.
No one knows which ideas will be the ones that will stick to the pages of history. For some, the stakes of not creating and sharing will be high. In the world of science and health – a particularly charged arena these days – envelope pushers are essential. And yet, “despite the fact that open-mindedness is the institutional norm in science – and, as we’ve seen, intellectual curiosity is the best predictor of scientific creativity – Campanario’s research revealed a systemic skepticism toward new theories that challenged existing scientific paradigms. And beyond Nobel Prize winners, many scientists and commentators have suggested that the scientific peer-review system is designed in a way that discourages innovation and instead rewards research that reinforces existing paradigms.”
With all signs pointing to the reality that our status quo (conventional, mass-produced, convenience-based ways of living) is dissolving our most essential basic resources, ecosystems, and social structures, we are faced with a crossroads and finite amount of time remaining on the clock. This doesn’t mean we throw out tried and true gains to reinvent well-functioning wheels, or that we shake systems up (or worse, make them collapse) at the expense of our most vulnerable as a thought experiment. But our current challenges do ask us as a society to get more comfortable playing with a maker mindset, including holding all kinds of new “what ifs” with curiosity.
Creative and flexible minds are essential in today’s polarized cultural atmosphere in the United States: for our own well-being, for the health of our communities and country, for our planet, for our children and for the survival of future generations. Raising well-resourced humans who are comfortable (and not threatened by) new ideas and all that entails, whether they bring joy, discomfort, empathy, introspection or integration, must be prioritized and valued. Just as a person grows in confidence from creative problemsolving (e.g., learning about themselves, attempting mastery, failing, taking risks, learning from mistakes), so too does a society learn from honest assessment, new strategies, implementing change, repairing and pivoting when needed. Not every person will measurably change the world with creative pursuits, but some will. And all will contribute to the much needed cultural shifts of today and in times ahead to come.
I imagine an energetic field of foundational openness that can be cultivated in each of our own homes, nourished by what we give ourselves and others permission to do with our most valuable resource of time, in what we allow ourselves to question, consider and explore. The more we incubate a creative culture individually, the better shot we all have at thriving as a collective body in the finite spaces of community, city, state, country, continent and planet.
I believe a compassionate, innovative culture can be nurtured by individuals who make stuff and unapologetically share what they create – even if just with one other person. Additionally, we must hold a safe space for others to do the same. And finally, we can’t forget the important deep belly breath that happens in the before, after and inbetween, the sacred pauses we take to look around, attune and notice what wants to emerge next. I believe creative response (ultimately a problem soliving skill) is a maker mentality that taps into joy, well-being, flow and even survival. And for better or worse, the daily habits and mindsets of every day individuals are what we combine collectively to create societal systems, movements and changes for the world and history at large.
I wish we all could mentally time travel and remember versions of past selves when our creative instincts were in tact, before we got so grown up, and so certain about everything and everyone. To think back to things we each loved to do; to re-thread the needle, begin again, and welcome our creative juices back home.
I want to always be a maker – of many things – as long as I live. A Jill of all trades and a master of none. Maybe I’ll get to see a tangible impact from this lifestyle, but probably not. The only returns I can count on for certain are my busy hands, quiet mind, and happy heart, and possibly some meaningful connection with others. And that is in itself a worthy pursuit.
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All Quotes and data sourced from Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind by Scott Barry Kaufman & Carolyn Gregoire
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If you’d like coaching support to reclaim creativity and challenge any limiting beliefs keeping you stuck, check out my offerings at The Handmade Life. If you’d like to read more about the things I have created over the years, check out my DIY offerings related to suburban homesteading.