Craft and Create: A Focus on Creativity
Creativity: Our Highest form of Self Expression
Creativity is one of our highest forms of self-expression.
It is also the stamp of our individuality; the very mark of our existence. Because the things we create are the embodiment of our thoughts and ideas.
No matter how big or how small – our own type of craft or creativity is our personal contribution to the world around us.
We are all involved in the act of doing and it is the evidence that we leave behind us as a result of our “doing” that is the mark of our creativity.
Creativity in Nature
In nature, creativity is an ongoing phenomenon on an infinite scale of immensity. But it also takes place on an infinite scale of minuteness.
Creativity is at play whenever a spider spins a web or a coral insect builds a reef at the bottom of the sea. A bird’s nest, an oyster’s pearl, the silver trail left by a snail in the grass – they all bear the stamp of creativity.
Creativity covers a gradation of phenomena that extends from the silken lid of a trapdoor spider or the honeycomb in a beehive – to great galaxies and nebulae in the outer reaches of the universe.
It is present when a caveman paints a rock or when a philosopher develops a new or inspired idea.
Craft and Create. The Hallmarks of Creativity
Great books, music, the pyramids, magnificent bridges and buildings – all the things that we craft and create are the hallmarks of our special type of creativity. They are the evidence left by our lives saying; “we were here; we passed this way and this is what we left for you.”
It is the purpose of every culture to preserve all the manifestations of its creativity. And the ability of a culture to preserve its own forms of creativity is an indication of its significance in history.
When our creations endure permanently in the form of concrete works of art or even if they are stamped into the minds of generations in the shape of lasting ideas, they become the landmarks of our cultures and our creativity.
The buildings of ancient Greece and Rome, The Bible of the Hebrews, the library in Alexandria, the ziggurats of ancient Babylonia, buildings and carvings of India, the works of art of the grand masters of Europe, great works of literature and music – all these are the tangible results of creativity, bequeathed to us, the inheritors of culture.
Whenever one of our creations lives on in the form of a painting, a piece of music or a poem it is our interpretation of the process of life. It is a living testimony to our thoughts and ideas.
But the evidence of our creativity is not always long- lasting. Many of our creations are evanescent and as brief as the song of a bird that fades swiftly on the air.
Even so, they will remain a part of creativity and will continue to live on in the memory of the universe.
Craft and Create – the Creative route to Personal Development