A Creative Being
I love this picture. It reminds me of the freedom of childhood, and the child struggling to be heard in all of us.
This is my son, David, more than two decades ago. I did something right. David still sketches and draws today. Children’s play is serious work. With no interference there are no guidelines for what is created, no colouring pages, no judgement. Just a nurturing of imagination and a freedom to explore – without prejudice.
We are born creative beings.
Yet how often do we rob ourselves of the time spent exploring the deepest recesses of our being? I have spent a lifetime downplaying my own creativity because I’ve been afraid of judgement. Whose? Mainly that formidable imaginary adversary in my head.
Somewhere along the way, our creativity has been usurped in favour of doing things “correctly:”
Colouring inside the lines.
The sky is blue.
Cats have two eyes.
It has always been done this way.
You might break it.
It’s not meant to do that.
Because I said so.
Sound familiar?
Technology has helped this process. Why try to imagine a solution if you can just Google it? Why try to explain what you saw if you can just take a picture? If this is what I see on the screen, that must be the way it is in real life. Unless it is fake news.
Our imagination is the arena where we play with ideas and raise questions about any subject.
Note some of the things we say when struggling with a new idea: “I can’t picture it,” “Let me make a mental model,” “I need to see it to believe it”, and “I am trying to envision it.” An idea requires engagement, a way to play with, or wrestle with, anything that comes to mind. Our imagination helps us convey meaning. Noted psychiatrist Carl Jung believed images come before understanding. He suggested that only after first experiencing symbolic images were we able to claim them, express them verbally, and come to understand them.
“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. . . [It] encircles the world.”
The process of imagining applies to an infant or a society on the verge of change. I believe we’re at the brink of a new way of understanding our role in the world.
John Lennon was onto something.
We need to imagine it first.
