The Day Your Creativity Died
The Death of Creativity
Years ago, when my kids were in elementary school, I worked as a Paraprofessional, or teacher’s assistant. Among a number of duties, I helped out in one of the kindergarten classes.
Even though I love children and feel like they are my people, it wasn’t a job I looked forward to. In fact, if I were to sum up my feelings about working with that particular teacher, I would say that her kindergarten class was where a child’s creativity went to die.
In her professed desire to prepare children for the real world, she would methodically suck the creative and individualistic life force out of any student who showed a propensity for sovereign thinking.
One day, in particular, exemplifies her preparatory strategy. The children were given a prompt to paint the trees they could see outside. They were given paper and their own set of watercolor paints, a paint brush, and some water.
Each child set to work. It was a fun and exciting activity, because up to this point their child minds hadn’t been corrupted with outside expectation or opinion, they began to paint freely and honestly.
Some children painted the typical brown trunk and green leaves. They were given high marks and high praise. But, this was Autumn in Colorado. So, naturally, some painted gray trunks and purple or orange or red or yellow leaves, or some combination of colors.
Immediately, their papers were snatched away and they were scolded, “Trees don’t look like that! Trees have brown trunks and green leaves.” They were given clean pieces of paper and told to paint trees the right way, the teacher’s way.
Imagine a child’s horror and humiliation, to be publicly censured and harshly corrected for observing the world in its natural state by someone they are supposed to trust and respect, but who is incapable of even acknowledging the truth, trees are not simply brown trunked, green leaved, symmetrical archetypes of one another. Trees, like the children painting them, are wildly diverse and naturally nonconforming. No two trees are identical, even if they share similar attributes with others.
Later, I approached the teacher and confronted her about this obvious error. Her reply was, “I’m just trying to prepare the children to succeed in the real world. When they move up grade by grade, they need to know how to conform and do things according to academic standards.”
What a shock they would get, when after years of seeing trees as brown and green, they would be required in art class or biology to look outside again and be forced to acknowledge trees aren’t all brown and green.
To be fair to the many teachers out there whose opinions about the real world differ from this particular kindergarten teacher’s, I salute you and the many dedicated hours spent helping children to learn how to read, write, understand mathematics, and a myriad of other important to know topics that expand their minds and help them to prepare for the real world, as well as enhance, instead of stifle, their marvelous imaginations and creativity.
Certainly, I’m not accusing all kindergarten teachers of such a gross and negligent error—the willful use of one’s authority to force mass-consensus on topics that are naturally and ethically debatable. Nor am I accusing all of the western academic world either.
However, we all have encountered, and maybe even been ourselves, creativity squashers, and those interactions aren’t easily overcome or healed, especially if they were shameful or occurred in the most influential years of our youth.
Step 1—Shaking Your Fist at the Do-Gooders
If you’re one of the many, many individuals who believe they aren’t creative, it’s important to remember and challenge those critical moments when your inherent creativity was squashed, humiliated, or killed by some well-meaning, yet oblivious, person(s).
It’s equally important to pinpoint the moment or moments when the river of your imagination was regulated to a stream, and then squeezed down to a trickle, or worse a barren wasteland, because the rains of creativity could no longer fall in your mind-desert filled with the occasional brown trunked, green leaved trees standing in a tidy, yet unnatural, little row.
Acknowledging that at some point in your past you had a desire to express yourself and the natural creative gifts you were born with is the first step in healing and regaining consciousness and command over your lost or wounded creative gifts.
Step 2—Acknowledging the Truth
Everyone is born creative, that includes you. That doesn’t mean everyone has a natural propensity for art making, although, most, if not all, children show an aptitude for it prior to their encounters with the “real world”.
Whether you have a mind or proclivity for mechanics, human biology, debating or politics, animal husbandry, abstract philosophies, color harmony, music, fitness, or any other form of imaginative thought and ability, you are creative.
Maybe, you have a way with teenagers or a sensual presence that inspires a muse-like feminine admiration or expression. Perhaps, you like to study fish or the habits of bees.
Whatever your creative inclinations are, most likely there is some haunting doubt lingering in your mind as to whether or not it’s okay for you to express the full measure of your gifts because somewhere along the line it wasn’t acceptable to do so.
But before you deal with the doubt, first recognize the truth, you are creative, even if your kindergarten teacher thought you weren’t or thought creativity wasn’t healthy to express in the real world.
Step 3—Invite the Morons to Leave
In the early years of my business, I created a meditation called, The Ghost Party. It became a popular method among my clients for booting out the hitchhiking naysayer ghost-voices in ones head that one had unwittingly picked up from negative encounters with people from the past.
Over time, we all collect insecurities in the form of outside voices and expectations we can’t or don’t want to live up to. As adults, it’s best to identify those negative voices and what they are saying, and then invite them one by one to GET OUT of one’s head and maybe even one’s life!
Honestly, a simple meditation really can help. But some hitchhiking voices are really persistent and may need constant reminders until they get the hint that they are seriously not welcome any more.
Step 4—Do Exactly What Others Believe You Can’t Do
Paint trees the way you want. Of course I mean that metaphorically.
Stop believing the lie, all trees aren’t brown and green or standing in perfect rows. Whatever it was that so and so said to you, do what you want the way you want to any way.
The healthiest thing those little kindergartners could have done when they got home from school that day was to take out some paper, paint and a brush and painted themselves some colorful, gnarly trees!
You need to rebel some and sing as loud as you can, tell others exactly what you think (even if it’s in the comfort of your bedroom and you’re alone), wear those 50 different shades of green with pride, bite your damn lollipop instead of licking it!
Even adults feel constrained by nameless, faceless arbiters of power that don’t really exist. Your doubt is a product of you choosing to paint the trees brown and green, even when you know they’re not.
In your heart, you know the truth about who you are and until you rebel against the so-called real world and be yourself, your creativity will lie dormant. So wake it up and do what others said you couldn’t or shouldn’t any way.
Step 5—Stop Asking For Permission and Petted-Praise
You’re not a child any more. Stop acting like one. Who cares if others like your art? Who cares if everyone agrees with you?
Stop seeking praise like a 2 year old. Your art probably sucks and your creative mind is most likely way out of practice. Get some support, work at it, improve, and be the adult you are.
I have to remind myself to get over my petty, childish fear all of the time. As hard as it is to hear, it’s easier if it comes from yourself.
A few years ago, one of my YouTube videos on self-love stirred something up for someone and in the comments they called me to repentance: “If you weren’t such a narcissist and cared more about others than yourself, you wouldn’t have had these problems in the first place.”
I was devastated. They hit a nerve I didn’t even know I had. For years, I didn’t post a single video of my own. “Was I a narcissist?” That question loomed in the back of my mind for longer than I’d like to admit.
Finally, I realized that whether I was one or not, I wasn’t really the one with the problem. My intention had been to help people, not to be self-absorbed. I had put my vulnerable self out there and the worst happened, someone didn’t like me.
It took a while, but I managed to parent myself back to uploading videos again. It was a learning experience, that I imagine we can all relate to.
Certainly, we all benefit from positive feedback and the occasional, “I believe in you,” support. Our creative minds get stuck in those negative memories and it’s tough to let them go. It might take time for you to believe in yourself after being knocked down by outside criticism. That’s okay. Just don’t let it beat you.
I love color-analysis and I’m a quiet member of a bunch of color groups on Facebook. The saddest part about being a member of those groups is watching adult women spending hours and hours asking others to type them and help them decide who they are and what is best for them.
At some point, go to an expert or take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror. Are you confused because you really don’t know or because you think others know better than you?
Stop asking for permission and if you need help, get it.
Conclusion
What was the day or month or year your creativity died? When did you decide your sovereignty was unacceptable?
For me, it was a gradual process, a surrendering over time. Maybe, that’s how it was for you too.
Whenever I surrender my sovereignty and ability to decide for myself what is right and what is wrong, my creativity dies with it.
No one can really rob you of your creativity. That kindergarten teacher couldn’t really force the kids to believe they weren’t acceptable, even though the pressure to conform was heavy.
Sovereignty and creativity are innate, yet we can choose to succumb to peer pressure or defer our sovereignty to those who have leverage over us.
It’s that moment when we paint the trees red and purple and pink again that our creativity can and will resurrect and revitalize. When you choose to say, “Come what may,” and then do it your own way despite the pressure to conform, that’s when your creativity river begins to flow again.
Be yourself. The real world needs more of that than it needs more brown and green trees.
