No paintbrush required: Being creative is not (necessarily) about making art

Recently, I was talking with some people about what makes a good life. I said that I think it includes being creative — that creativity is a key component of living well. But no sooner had I said “creative”, than the cry went up: 

• “I can’t paint.”
• “I can’t tell stories.”
• “I can’t draw a stick figure!”
• “I can’t write.”

Fine. Good. No problem. Because being creative is a state of mind, it’s not about drawing or writing or painting. Of course, it can be. But it doesn’t have to be.

At its core, being creative means being ok with that state of mind that settles into wondering, into pondering, into noodling on something — or on nothing, come to that. It’s the state of mind that Guy Claxton calls ‘the tortoise mind’.

We each have one, just as we each have a ‘hare mind’, also. It’s just that we have most probably most usually been rewarded for living in our hare mind, for being driven by our hare mind.

Claxton describes it like this: The hare mind is the problem solver, while the tortoise mind is the problem ponderer.

The tortoise mind is not concerned with action or decisions; that is for the hare mind. The kicker is that the hare mind works best after the tortoise mind has spent time pondering and wondering — not actively thinking about whatever is on the top of the agenda at the moment. The beauty of this two-part mind is that, if the hare side is patient and just waits, the tortoise mind will feed it, quietly and creatively, so that when the hare side takes over, it will appear as if the decision or action or understanding arises spontaneously from the genius of the person.

Two other factors contribute to this understanding of creativity, writes psychologist Donald MacKinnon: 1. The ability to play — “to get enjoyably absorbed in a puzzle…to be curious about [something] for its own sake and 2. Sitting with indecision, deferring decision making. MacKinnon says this is not the same as being “indecisive”, but is about feeling okay with the uncertainty of an open-ended context — because this very open-endedness can lead to new information arising and new ideas being formed. He says, “Creative people are much better at tolerating the vague sense of worry that we all get when we leave something unresolved.”

I read about both these men and their thoughts in a short and entertaining book written by a third man, John Cleese, whom we likely all know from his Monty Python days. Cleese studied science in high school and then went to Oxford to study law; during his time there, he met his comedy buddies and his life turned down a different path. He wrote CREATIVITY: A short and cheerful guide as a way of investigating what it means to be creative and to show that it is not a rare talent that a person either has or does not have: Anyone can be creative. It’s a state of mind.

So, give yourself a break. Sit down, go for a walk or do whatever you feel like. Enjoy some quiet time to slow down and let your tortoise mind come to life. You might just be surprised at what it comes up with. No paintbrush required.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo by RhondaK Native Florida Folk Artist on Unsplash