Five Years a Writer

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 min