Creating

The skies have gone grey again and the temperature is at 52 degrees fahrenheit.  As predicted, the rains have come.  It will be another few days of the elixir of life, sending nourishment to the plant world and in some areas,  disaster to the human world.  I started to write on Sunday and stopped.  Today, I started again and as it turns out - it is Wednesday.

The spring equinox arrived with no one heralding a new season opening. Watching what is happening in our world is one thing;  understanding it is quite another. There are those who focus on the process and then, those who focus on the outcomes.  Creating is one of those things that is very much about process.  The outcome may or may not be what one expects, but the fact of engaging in the process of moving from nothing and empty space to making something and taking up space - can be energizing.

It happens when one is composing a song (a new sound), starting a stretch of the body that could lead to a full and flowing movement (a new dance), or even taking a thought and following its trail (a new recipe, a writing, a vaccine!). It's about the re-opening of a way of using the tangible or intangible - to come to the point where something new emerges.  Creativity is the essence of living, not just existing.  It is about emergence.  This is what spring feels like - even in the rain.

The rinse-and-repeat cycle is what life is like for many who are satisfied.  One can hardly ever be satisfied if one is human.  There is always a little discomfort - it is the itch to create and to be creating.  It comes from knowing somewhere deep within one's being that all is not quite right... and there is in living fully, a recognition that this doubt, which can be very tiny or very big, needs to be addressed.  It seems that satisfaction with how things are tends to block creativity. One has to be a little disturbed and very curious to go into the creative space - it requires research, skill, imagination (something many in our generations have lost).

Yes, there are times when being satisfied with how things are can be heavenly.  But all along there exists a slight undertone of anxiety.  Because if nothing else - one knows that change is on the horizon.  When the energy of life happens, there is always a chance that being satisfied can be upended.  And the upending can be glorious or disastrous - we don't necessarily get to choose.

Those who fortunate to have a bit of creativity survive all the "conveniences" of living in the modern world (think, push a button and get a hot meal; open a fridge and find a bounty of food that would rot without the box; push a key and find thousands of answers to a simple question:  What is creativity?).