All the Time in the World?
Published by Andrew Leigh April 18th, 2007 in Just Doing It.| Creative Development for Artists, Writers and all Artistic Creativity |
When is the right time to get serious about your creative instinct? How long are you willing to put off your exploration?
These are big questions, prompted by a chat with friend and coaching colleague Susie Briscoe. Susie raised a couple of interesting perspectives on this that I’d not really considered. The first is somewhat contentious - it’s that people now often take longer to move into a truly adult mindset - that stage in their life where they really start focusing on the things they want to achieve - or the person they want to be.
Well - I guess there’ll be lots of views on that, and I’d love to hear your take on it. If Susie is right, then this is something that impacts on much more than the creative elements in our makeup. However, as this blog is called The Creative Instinct, that’s what I’m going to focus on.
For a start - you can look at this as incredibly positive. It could mean that people are now taking longer to be playful and experimental in finding their true path and so finding that path much more effectively. Too often the result of following the ‘adult’ ambitions and responsibilities of career, partner, family, home etc, is the loss or submersion of any creative ambition. I can understand that. Both myself and my partner, Lynda, squashed our creative and artistic urges right through our twenties. And even when we began to take them more seriously in our thirties they then got squashed again through new job pressures and some serious family health challenges.
So in one sense my view here is to hang on to that playful mindset as long as you can. But what if the playful mindset itself then becomes the obstacle to following your own fulfilling path? It’s one thing to know your best direction - it’s another thing entirely to actually make a decision about whether or how you follow it.
And perhaps that was Susie’s second point: the reassuring illusion (an illusion that can persist right into our thirties, forties, and beyond for some) that we have all the time in the world to do things that will give real meaning and substance to our lives - that we can put them off for yet another year, and then another one after that.
Not everyone needs an outlet for their creativity - but if you are reading this blog I guess that like me, you do need that outlet. You need it to achieve a full sense of who you are - to feel complete and fulfilled. You can bury it as deep as you like so long as you are willing to pay the cost - nagging frustration about unfulfilled potential, a feeling that something is missing, and the risk that once buried you may never find the opportunity or the courage to bring it back to the surface.
Or you can look it full in the face, shake it by the hand, give it a big hug and thank it for being a part of you - a part of your own uniqueness.
And then you can give your wonderful, beautiful creative instinct the room it needs to shine, and you can bask in its warm glow of satisfaction.
Which will it be for you? And if you haven’t already, when will you start?
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Your views are appreciated. Please leave a comment on this post.
When Andy invited me to check out his blog, I was intrigued by the title - and promised to comment if I felt comment-inspired…
And so it is that this is the first of a few comments I’ll add today, and I’d like to thank Andy for this opportunity.
Reading this opening entry, I was reminded of my mother and her love for watercolour painting. Entering my teens, I recall her modestly showing me through her art scrap-book where she introduced me to small carefully laid out squares of colour showcasing the amazing variety of watercolour pigments… Of cubes and tubes of paint, and the carefree relaxed combinations of them, playing together to form new colours and textures on the white pages.
From mum, I learnt about the different types of paper and brushes appropriate to watercolour - and in what she described as very ‘rough’ attempts - I found a real appreciation for the beauty and simple complexity of watercolour landscapes that has stayed with me over the intervening years.
The sadness of this story is not just in my mother’s playing down of her ability. But moreso in her choice (for I believe despite circumstances she could have chosen differently) to accept the belief that life’s adult responsibilities deserved priority over such creative expression. In fact, not just deserved priority (as raising a family is an important process) but that life’s responsibilities demanded an exclusion of creativity.
I am thankful that she tried to encourage some of her love for watercolour through me, yet it is not surprising that I too only dabbled with it (and never with my mother’s natural ease), also determining that life’s other adult responsibilities were more worthy of focus than nurturing my creative instincts.
And so it is, that I count myself as one of the blessed ones - who had started down that path of unquestioned acceptance of adult focus, and found my creative instinct reawoken in my late twenties rather than further along my journey.
The only time you ever have is now!
Sam
That’s an illuminating message, Sam. Thank you for posting it.
Andy