The Gospel of Creativity

I'm not a religious person, but I understand the usefulness of written gospels that tell us how we should behave. People forget, and so we need these reminders. I've decided to start a collection of my own to support the ideas that I think are most necessary for the world right now, and for our lives.

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Creativity is not just that thing that you're told you have when you're little and you're coloring the horses purple. It's a state of being, an action, a practice, and a goal.

Creativity is something like the old idea of Divine Inspiration, but it's also something that comes from within us, and is fed by everything we do, all the ideas we listen to and think about, and it's made up entirely of what we fill ourselves with--so we need to fill ourselves with the sort of things we want to produce.

Creativity is a practice that you can get better at. The more you create, the more the world is something to be created from and for. The more you create, the more you can create.

Creativity is an instinct, the opposite of the impulse to destroy. It's the direct answer to destruction, and the best way to combat it.

Creativity is a cure. If there are problems in the world and in your life, you can work through them or around them or past them with creative thinking--ask yourself: What can I make out of this? What can I take from this and turn into something beautiful or useful or helpful? What can I learn from this?

Creativity is the connection of ideas that no one has put together before.

Creativity is the re-connection of ideas that people once put together and have since forgotten how it goes.

Creativity is looking at what you have and seeing all the potentials in it--and then working to actualize those potentials into something that adds to the world, your life, your culture, your community.

Creativity is making something out of what looks like nothing--and making something out of everything.

Creativity is making sense of the chaos that can so easily swamp everything.

Creativity is using what you've learned doing everything you've ever done to make something new instead of just making the same choices, the same decisions, the same actions and the same mistakes over and over again. It's making new mistakes and learning from them.

Creativity is making life--literally and figuratively.

Creativity is an answer. It brings meaning and adds context and offers alternatives.

And most of all, creativity is innate. Nature creates. When we're kids, we create everything--worlds and lives and dreams; it's giving in to life being stupid and mean that beats it out of us, but it's never really gone. We just have to remember how to do it.

So go. Create. Make life better. The more you do, the easier it becomes and the more creative your creativity gets to be.