I have had the privilege of being close to two extremely creative people over the course of the last 3 years (one is the boy I have nannied and the other is my boyfriend). I have always found myself happiest around highly creative people. I am creative but have learned that often I sacrifice my creativity on the altar of expedited results.
One reason I’ve discovered that I do that is because I was not allowed as a child the important lesson of the process of trying and failing. I always hated learning because I felt like I was going to fail. I was dyslexic and could not read until I was eleven. Both of my parents had a tendency to want to do things for me. I noticed that for me to really understand things it took way too much time because I was far slower at understanding things than everyone else. I did work harder than everyone else on things that I truly cared about but at the same time things that were very hard I often gave up on.
In addition, as a performer I love the instant gratification of being able to perform something, no matter how great that piece of work is. There are things that I simply will not perform. Yet there are plenty of my own songs that I can pump out quickly and seamlessly without any crafting or thought. As a songwriter instead of perfecting my songs I often just try to finish them as quickly as possible so that I can get out there to perform.
But these two creative people I know are not performers. They are more like inventors. Everything is a quest of discovery and it doesn’t matter the hours it takes or how many failures and start-overs they run into, they will not stop until they make something as beautiful to them as they can make it. I’ve watched both of them spend hours on something only to scrap it and start all over. I would be devastated by this. Yet I watch them deep dive into learning things because they know they will understand it better by the end. I also see the joy they take in the process itself.
This creative process I am learning to surrender to is reminding me again of the importance of patience instead of leaning towards instant gratification. Creative pursuits cannot just be things we cross off our to do list. It is a part of me. It’s learning to trust my creative instinct and massage each pursuit into its full being. I cannot simply achieve a creative pursuit like a goal. It’s more like a relationship. It’s intentional yet it must happen organically when it’s ready to happen.
Perhaps this is why many of our generation are writing more cynical love songs. We have sacrificed deep, lasting relationships on the altar of instant gratification. I was listening to love songs from generations before mine and how caught up in a dream these people truly were. Have we lost our ability to dream?
I was reminded again of a time when I told a dear friend of mine that I had feelings for him. I had spent years blowing the whole thing out of proportion in my mind, imagining the feelings were mutual when they were not. I was embarrassed and told him so. He responded that it wasn’t a bad thing but that it instead showed my ability to dream.
I held onto that encouragement. I think the ability to dream is crucial to everything in life and I think it’s what sustains us in the process. We can be patient believing that something good will come out of everything we try. Even supposed failures are merely places of learning and growth that will tune our creative ear to the sounds that we need to hear. I hope in this season I can learn to dream and lean into the process of creation and even if it takes days, weeks, months, or years I will develop a patient heart that is ever creating new worlds.
