The Goal of Creativity

When we notice and appreciate something beautiful, we are inspired to be creative. We yearn to express how we felt when, for example, the beauty of the waning sunlight shines past the forest trees or dew drops on a red rose reflect the morning light. Creativity is more than thought processes that can be honed and developed. It's more than thinking outside the box and using knowledge to come up with new solutions. Creativity is soul deep; it is here in this bottomless well where our yearning arises to recreate through creativity our happy and joyful experiences.

Creativity and suffering are linked. We all suffer, although to different degrees. Who could not suffer in a world of death, disease, and old age? We suffer because the beauty of nature and experiences of happiness do not last. We suffer striving to have these festive moments again, which are interrupted by sleep, hunger, the need to tend to a child's scrapped knee, funerals, and crime.

While we're busy working and tending to responsibilities, we miss the beauty that is all around us, which diminishes the ability to connect with our creative drive. A drive that makes all our hardships and struggles worth it. Too much creative neglect can lead to dissatisfaction and burnout. One needs to find a good balance between doing and being for creativity to flourish. It doesn't surprise me that creative ideas arise while in the shower. Showers provide us with breaks in our busy routines. They allow the mind to turn off while enjoying the feel of hot water.

The creative drive is an awesome force. An aspect of humans that can not be instilled in an artificially intelligent robot. A force that can not be genetically altered and injected into a bio-mechanical creation. The creative drive is as its base level a life force that can not be replicated or reproduced by science. Yet, it certainly exists and most likely could be measured by psychological experiments. Would a test group who practiced a balance between doing and being be less stressed and more satisfied than the control group that did not balance these states of mind? Being allows one to more fully appreciate the inspiration everywhere, hence, keeping the creative drive in optimal condition. Someone geared towards doing can only catch glimpses of the inspiration around them, keeping the creative well near empty.

The creative well is where all the beauty and inspiration noticed is stored along with our experiences. When these factors blend and mesh together it is like the charging of a battery. That is, it is noticing and appreciating that keeps us mentally healthy because the sought after experiences are boosted by the, for example, graceful movements of a ballerina. In contrast, without appreciation for the ballerina the tragic and difficult experiences will tend to be the ones that are energized. Of course, it would take more that one instance like the ballerina example. It is when one consistently avoids inspiration that trouble is a foot.

To this end, creativity springs up from the creative drive and compels humans to express their experiences as a means to avoid the inevitable suffering of human existence. Creativity is more powerful than hardships and struggles, allowing us to continue onward towards goals. When one is too busy to catch more than glimpses of the beauty around them, the creative drive is diminished. This lessening of creativity makes travails harder to handle because an ability to re-experience the good times is over powered by drama, which is what one will get from an artificially intelligent robot because the creative drive can not be created by science