Creativity

"There is no connection between creativity and age. There is only a connection between productivity and age." Albert-László Barabási, Late Bloomers, TED Radio Hour, 18 November 2022

I've been trying to go toward what's "warm." Glennon Doyle, Untamed.

I frequently joke that my children -- and our whole family unit, for that matter -- are 'comin in hot! I don't mean it in a derogatory way, though. I mean it in a "live outloud" type of way. My children are so creative and warm and enthusiastic about life, and they have been a good reminder to me to reclaim that part of myself. Law school is not the typical choice for a sensitive soul who likes HD and Emerson, but I enrolled and completed my studies and then practiced law like any good New Englander with a Puritanical background: through grit and sheer force of will. Was it pretty? Nope. Did I cry in the lounge outside the law clinic while trying to sketch the human form in the style of the Italian Renaissance? Yes I did. Did my peers make bets behind my back as to whether I would make it through? Also yes.

For a while I marveled at how different my children seemed from me. But then I realized that maybe I still nurtured some of that creativity in a hidden place. The pandemic and homeschooling encouraged me to examine our garden more closely, which led to my strange obsession with bugs, which led to a little camera with a microscope feature. And looking at the bugs reminded me of Annie Dillard, which reminded me of college and poetry. And then my journey into the neurodiverse world gave me time to think.

Perhaps the u-curve of happiness, which says that the youngest and oldest among us are the happiest, is related to creativity. I did not pursue a creative career because I did not think I was "good enough." There was also part of me that wanted to prove, as a young woman, that I could do anything my male peers could do, and that meant conquering a traditionally male career. As I get older, I find comfort in my averageness. I don't have to be the best at something to pursue it, as long as I find meaning in it. Virginia Woolf wrote the following about writing, but I think it's true for any creative pursuit:

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster ... is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison. A Room of One's Own.

If I have the privilege, and it is a great privilege, to have a home, family, and my health, and money to buy groceries and pay my bills, then why squander it? What a beautiful gift to have time to create. I don't need to produce a masterpiece, I just need to allow that side of myself space.

Yesterday my daughter attended her first rehearsal for Camp Rock. I had the joy of watching the cast members practice a little choreography outside. I laughed when I saw that, in addition to her love of reading, writing, and drawing, B inherited my dancing skills. Which is to say, she does not have any. The rest of the cast picked up the simple dance steps and turned and shimmied mostly on cue, and my poor daughter looked like me the one time I tried Zumba. She had a smile on her face the entire time, though, and it made me incredibly happy. I need to continue to encourage that creative spirit within her. When she was little and we'd bake together, she'd throw up her hands at all the flour and spices and globs of dough on the counter and say, "What a beautiful mess!"

Creativity does not need to be perfect, it just needs space to be. And I think the younger or older we are, the easier it is to understand that concept.