I’m reading an NPR article about creativity as an excercise in healthfulness, and I’m all for it. Here’s the link, if you’re interested.
I love the idea (the truth) that we humans are hardwired to make stuff: relationships, dinner, quilts, upcycled jewelry, rules, grafiti, etc. We want to create, to make things that effect people, even if they don’t last.
(Or things that last, even if they don’t effect people — which is an interesting thought to me: does it matter more that what I make will be around for a long time? Or does it matter more that someone will see it, taste it, witness to it as we watch it disappear?)
I have lots of thoughts about that, above. Dinner, for instance. I spent 5 hours making Christmas Eve dinner a couple of weeks ago, and it was gone and probably forgotten in 23 minutes. I lived with strange sadness the rest of the day. I felt like my “making” was underappreciated, adn that therefore I was undervalued or worth less… or even worthless. It was a strange combination of being full of delicious, near-perfect turkey and empty and void because gathering the grownup kids home is weirdly hard, even as I squeeze the good, wonderful, delicious drops out with my bare hands.
Or the novel I’m finally revising after spending the summer drafting and then putting it away for months. What if nobody reads it? Like, literally nobody? What if I don’t submit it? Won’t I still feel proud that I created it? That it lives (in some form) because I made it?
Whatever the case, I keep making. Because it’s good for me. It’s necessary. It’s critical to being the human kind.