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My literal biggest pet peeve is when someone says, “I’m not creative.”
In order to exist in this world, everyone has to be creative. I think we have simply defined creativity so narrowly that most people have been convinced it does not belong to them.
For some reason, when people hear the word creative, they immediately think of someone who can draw or paint. If they can’t make something beautiful with their hands, they assume they have been disqualified.
But let me tell you the truth: you absolutely do not have to make anything visual to be a creative person.
Creativity is the ability to imagine something beyond what currently exists.
I’ve been a professional creative for most of my adult life, which unfortunately means I have learned that creativity is much less magical than people want it to be.
Creativity is the decision to look at what currently exists and believe that something else is possible.
It’s imagining an alternative.
It’s seeing the things other people cannot see.
It’s noticing the microscopic details most people walk past.
It’s paying attention to that uncomfortable feeling that something is missing, even when you do not have the language for it yet.
And the strange thing is, we are incredibly good at this when we are young.
If everyone is creative, why are so many adults absolutely convinced that they aren’t?
The honest answer is a little sad.
At some point, usually pretty early, we start learning how to conform.
We learn which answers get rewarded. Which clothes make us fit in. Which interests are acceptable. Which parts of ourselves are a little too weird, loud, sensitive, ambitious, or different.
And slowly, following the rules starts to feel a lot safer than experimenting with who we might actually be.
Eventually, that extends into adulthood.
Find an acceptable 9-to-5. Learn to speak fluent office jargon. Wear an outfit devoid of personality for at least 40 hours a week. Be professional. Be reasonable. Be normal.
And then, maybe, on nights and weekends, you can be yourself.
But the performance of respectability is debilitating.
If you wear the mask long enough, eventually you forget you’re allowed to take it off.
And it doesn’t stop at work.
The beigeification starts creeping into every corner of our lives until we wake up one day and realize we have become really good at consuming things and increasingly unsure of how to make anything of our own.
And that is where I think the artist enters the conversation.
The difference between an artist and everyone else is not that an artist possesses creativity and everyone else does not.
Everyone is creative.
An artist simply chooses to practice that creativity intentionally.
Artists repeatedly ask: What else could this be?
Sometimes they solve problems most people haven’t even noticed yet.
But art is only one expression of creativity.
Creativity is in the way you write and the way you think.
It is in the way you explain an idea through a video or make a social media post that causes someone to see their life differently.
It’s realizing that the weird green pants somehow work with the striped shirt.
It’s looking into a refrigerator containing half an onion, chicken thighs, and one increasingly suspicious bell pepper and somehow making a delicious dinner.
It’s building a collection of greeting cards and sending them to the people you love because you know it makes them feel seen.
Creativity is everywhere once you start paying attention.
And I think it is also one of the ways we find our way back to ourselves.
Creating is the process of reaching into your inner world, finding something that feels difficult to explain, and giving it a shape outside of yourself.
Sometimes that shape is a journal entry. Sometimes it is a short story, a comic, a garden, a small business, a gathering with friends, a beautifully organized shelf, or a poem that helps someone finally feel understood.
When we create from that place, we give other people permission to access something inside themselves too.
So when I talk about creativity, I am not talking about a special talent reserved for a select group of gifted people.
am talking about our ability to solve problems, imagine new realities, notice the seen and the unseen, and express something inside of ourselves that did not exist in the world before.
Creativity is not something some people have and other people do not.
You might be out of practice.
You might have spent years believing it belonged to somebody else.
You might not even know what your creativity looks like yet.
But it is still yours.
And I think remembering that is one of the ways we stay human.
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