Creativity takes time. It requires space.
Space to muse. Space to think. Space unconstrained by time. Creativity is timeless.
Creating something new from nothing, never truly happens. Instead we take an experience, a thing, a thought from one context and apply it in a unique manner to another experience, thing, or thought. Uniqueness is the operative word here.
Ancient cultures did not have a word for creativity. Instead of creativity, ancient cultures used the concept of discovery to describe what we today call creativity.
In a discovery process, although there is an anticipated outcome, the pathway is never completely clear. The journey of creativity starts with that which is known and dives into the parts of the path that are unknown.
“If you don’t know where you are going you might wind up some place else.” – Yogi Berra
And that some place else may delight and surprise you.
We live so much in our own world of instant gratification, a world so busy with doing that many of us fear a moment of being, and we may miss that moment of discovery that so many of us cherish as an act of creativity.
Our European heritage leaves a strange imprint in the mythology of the creation of the world. Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden into a world of suffering and injustice. Thus, we spend our lives trying to earn our way back into the Garden of Eden.
Imagine for a moment, as is the case for many other cultures, that the world we live in was the start of the creative process. Our role is to complete it.
Ask yourself, for a moment, what space do you need?