In
the prologue of Henry V, Shakespeare poetically asks his audience a favor. He
asks them to suspend their belief for a moment. He is about to tell an epic
story set in fifteenth century England of a young king who lays claim to
certain parts of France based on his distant lineage. This leads to a war
between two great kingdoms. How could the humble makings of a small wooden stage,
a handful of actors, and stagehands produce such a
massive story? Aside from some very creative artistry, you could imagine that
“special effects” were very limited in the 1600s. Shakespeare struggled with
this obstacle. How could he start his play with his audience primed for the
story? How could he avoid the initial uphill battle of believability? He came
to the conclusion that he would simply ask a favor. He asks,
“Think when we talk of horses, that you see them printing their
proud hoofs i' the receiving earth; For 'tis your thoughts that
now must deck our kings, carry them here and there; jumping o'er
times, turning the accomplishment of many years
into an hour-glass…”
Shakespeare
humbly requests that we delve deeper into our imagination. Don’t let yourself
be stifled. Don’t limit yourself to accepted norms or let perceived reality
stand in the way of your vision. Shakespeare challenges the skeptic inside all
of us, encouraging us to see with our mind's
eye. To see a scope of possibility beyond the meager visage of what is before
us. He asks this because he knows
people allow themselves to be stifled and distracted from seeing possibility.
Understanding
creativity requires an acceptance of possibility. We all have perceptions regarding
our own creative capacity. We judge our potential based on our past efforts and
their results. It is important to have the courage to trust our secret
confidence as if nobody was watching. As if nobody could see us fail. Our early
judgment of our capacity is what keeps us from reaching our possibility.
I
would like to take a note from Shakespeare and call for a muse of fire that
might inspire you to not judge creativity on the results of its process, but
instead to take note of the capacity of the process undiscovered.
We
progress through ideas in our mind as we do through a play on a stage. There is
a almost unconscious need to learn and predict outcomes during every challenge.
There are assumptions about the plot and become vested in the emotional highs
and lows. We live for a moment in the setting. We experience surprise and
adulation for heroic acts and frustration and anger for injustices. There is a
world being revealed to us causing us to literally feel our hearts sink or
swell during the process. We take a voyage to faraway places while sitting
comfortably in the dark theater of our perception. We have this amazing ability
to imagine things beyond our physical reach and experience them honestly as
though they're really happening. We experience a lifetime of emotions and
evaluate hundreds of potential outcomes. We balance consequences and we weigh
options. We do this constantly. Endless
scenarios play out in our minds at almost every moment of our lives. We
explore, discover, and act and react within this humble stage between our ears.
It thrives for the challenge of a goal worthy of it. It’s hungry for the
struggle because it was made for the struggle.
Our
mind needs to find solutions — whether it's trying to figure out why there is
more matter than antimatter in the observable universe, or deciding what to eat
for breakfast. Creativity is our never-ending,
continuous act of processing information that results in some kind of action or
reaction. It allows us to cope with the unexpected and encourages us to reach for
new and better solutions. The key is to let it do its job. And at times
allowing it to do its job requires courage.
In
creativity, the verb is more important than the noun. We are all creative, so
the notion that you are creative isn’t relevant. It is the act of creating that
is important, and awareness of this act is key. We all need to experience
ourselves in the creative process. We create and solve problems because we
must. We are wired to do so. Every choice we make is based on a process of
discovery, evaluation and risk. We need to open ourselves up to realizing that
creativity is key to our development and understanding of the world around us.
It is our process of learning.
Everyone
has a moment of discovery, a
moment when our perception widens and we realize something that before was
unclear. Creativity is a hunger for those moments. It a process fueled by our
natural love of discovery.
So
why would creativity require courage? There is a fear that comes with
exploration at every level. The thing a man walking on the tight rope fears is
obvious — one miscalculation and he falls to his death. He’s reminded of this
fear continuously during the walk across that rope. But during the creative
process we find that we often slip. The fear isn’t as clear and present,
but the void below us exists just the same. There is no guarantee of success.
On the contrary, it is much easier to realize what
could go wrong than it is to trust one's footing. But in much the same way a
tightrope walker often uses a net as a safeguard, we, too, possess a net — one
woven from every failure and mistake we've made. It's a net that made of wit
and wisdom, and it gets fuller and stronger with every walk.
If
we think of our creative process as problem solving, then we can see that we
use it endlessly. Every choice or consideration is part of that process, so
creativity is not so much an act as it is a habit. It’s important to think of
creativity as an ever-present biological part of our mental process, and not
just a tool we can turn on or off.
Someone
at one of my workshops asked me a question. “How do you know when it’s okay to
turn off your creativity so that you can actually get some work done?” We often
make the mistake of having a limited perspective on creativity. We don’t roam
the earth carrying our noses in our pockets, taking them out only when we
consciously decide we need to use them. Consider all the smells you would have missed
if this was true! You couldn’t consciously realize
every moment when you would benefit from an unexpected smell. Creativity is
much like this. Our perception is that it’s not a constant part of our
awareness. There is a false belief that, for us to be creative, we need to be
aware of the act or prepare ourselves for the execution of a creative journey.
In reality, we will never reach the end of the
journey. Creativity is not a tactic; it’s biological and ever present,
endlessly working. Our ability to improve on it requires an understanding of
this idea.
I would like to invite you to swim
in the deep end of my perceptions of creativity and share my relationship with
the creative process. My hope is that you will see something within my
experience and understandings of it that will help you recall and build on your
own creative capacity. So I humbly ask you to dial down your skepticism, ignore
you perception of your own creative worth and bravely explore your creative
potential. And like Shakespeare did in his prologue to Henry V, I would like to
challenge your perceptions of the little theater between our ears.
