Are You a Creative Person?

(Hang on though for the reason. Read this column before proceeding to the second column to the right.)

Pretend for a moment that you live on an isolated island where there are no modern conveniences such as television, phones, faxes, computers, books, etc. However, you have an extremely fine set of art supplies (presumably left there in previous years by a passing trade ship.)

You've always liked to paint scenes from your island ... the birds, trees, people, clouds, etc. Finally, you decide you need a new challenge so you go into a deep meditation and you see a vision. Its beauty and power excite you and you work on your painting for days and weeks in a joyful frenzy.

Finally it's finished and you show it to your friends and family. They are stunned and call you a creative genius. The painting is hung in the most prominent place on the island and people start calling you to paint pictures for them. You become rich and famous ... at least on your island.

One day, a ship lands and some people come ashore and happen by where your painting hangs. You step closer, eagerly anticipating their acclaim, then you hear, "Hey, look! Someone has copied the Mona Lisa."

• What happens to your status as a creative genius? (It probably plummeted with the islanders and never existed at all with the visitors.)

• Did it have anything to do with you as a talented artist or original thinker? (No ... it only had to do with the viewers' perceptions of your work.)

So, when we say you're not a creative person, it's because no one can be a creative person, he or she can only be perceived as a creative person.

According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his new book Creativity, there are three requirements for creativity:

• Field: A field of endeavor such as art, music, science, business, architecture, etc., which has a set of rules or norms.
• Work: Something (book, painting, product, etc.) which goes beyond the rules or norms of the field.
• Judges: A group of people who know the rules and norms of the field, see the work created, and judge it novel and worthy.

There are many ways to fail the creativity test that have little to do with you or your work:

1. If your field doesn't have accepted rules or norms or has rules and norms that are highly inflexible, it's hard to be deemed creative. Street sweepers, lettuce pickers, crossing guards, sales clerks, nurses, stock brokers, accountants, etc., have a very limited range in which to be creative in their fields. If they move outside that range, they're not perceived as creative, they're probably fired.

2. If your work is not seen by the judges. We honor Da Vinci's creativity because we can see his artwork and his drawings of helicopters and other futuristic devices. We do not recognize the creativity of the hermit in Iowa who fills volumes of notebooks with possibly brilliant but unread or unreadable scrawls.

3. If the judges do not consider your work novel and worthy. This is highly subjective and time-sensitive. The creative work of one generation may be considered quaint or passed by the next, only to be rediscovered and praised as creative by a future set of judges.

When people talk about someone as being "such a creative person," they are generally referring to that person's originality. The person is always doing something new or has a certain flare about them. Originality is an important part of creativity but it doesn't automatically make someone creative. Only the judges who perceive the work as novel and worthy can do that.    l

(Hang on again for the reason. And make sure you have read the first column to the left.)

Look around you and identify the most joyful people you know ... the people who radiate life and goodwill. Chances are excellent that you'll find them expressing themselves in significant ways.

You'll find:

• a teacher connecting with students in a powerful, transforming way
• an entrepreneur working long hours building a business
• a dancer learning a complicated routine
• a rock climber inching up a challenging crevass
• a parent planning a birthday party
• a lawyer researching an obscure case
• a jazz pianist composing
• a cook experimenting with an unusual seasoning
• a fisherman trying to outsmart a wily trout
• a designer sketching a fashion layout
• a minister writing a sermon
• a poet capturing a metaphor
• an engineer tinkering with a problematic device
• a twelve-year-old kid "playing" endlessly with graphics software

What all these folks have in common is that they're learning, exploring, breaking through barriers, generating ideas, rejecting ideas, solving problems, identifying opportunities, making judgments, receiving input from others and their senses, experimenting, trying, failing, trying again. In other words, they're creating ... creating works of art, experiences, inventions, pictures, words, relationships, music, recipes, fun, and self-fulfillment.

Every one of them is exercising creativity, because that's what we do. It comes with the territory of being a human being. We create. We are creative beings. We create because it helps us survive and it feels good ... it brings us joy.

When we don't create, when we don't learn and grow, it brings us pain. It deadens us. When this innate urge to create is thwarted or stifled, we turn to unhealthy substitutes such as drugs, alcohol, crime, violence, etc. to lessen the pain.

So the answer to the question of "Are you creative?" is an overwhelming "yes!" All of us have the need to create and it has nothing to do with whether or not someone else labels us "creative." To eliminate part of the confusion about creativity, perhaps we should use "Creativity" (big-C) to mean the kind of creativity that is recognized by a group of judges and "creativity" (small-c) to mean the innate drive each of us have to express ourselves.

Our focus should be on small-c creativity because that's all we can control ... and that's where the fun is. As we learn more and more ways to generate ideas and express our unique combination of talents, skills and life experiences, we might earn a big-C Creativity label but that is a side-effect, a cherry on top of the life-sundae ... nice, but not the main event.    l