A Very Creative New Year!

By Mildred Wilson.

I ended 2015 with this book under my belt: "Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear" by Elizabeth Gilbert, which was a joy to read and to listen to. It is a superb book to connect with, expand through, reflect upon, etc., one's inner artist.

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I admire Gilbert's reflection on living, on the Art of Living — all throughout the book. The following is just one of the many excerpts I loved from this book:

"Your Permisson Slip
Here’s what I’m getting at, dear ones:

You do not need anybody’s permission to live a creative life.

Maybe you didn’t receive this kind of message when you were growing up. Maybe your parents were terrified of risk in any form. Maybe your parents were obsessive-compulsive rule-followers, or maybe they were too busy being melancholic depressives, or addicts, or abusers to ever use their imaginations toward creativity. Maybe they were afraid of what the neighbors would say. Maybe your parents weren’t makers in the least. Maybe they were pure consumers. Maybe you grew up in an environment where people just sat around watching TV and waiting for stuff to happen to them. Forget about it. It doesn’t matter.
Look a little further back in your family’s history. Look at your grandparents: Odds are pretty good they were makers. No? Not yet? Keep looking back, then. Go back further still. Look at your great-grandparents. Look at your ancestors. Look at the ones who were immigrants, or slaves, or soldiers, or farmers, or sailors, or the original people who watched the ships arrive with the strangers onboard. Go back far enough and you will find people who were not consumers, people who were not sitting around passively waiting for stuff to happen to them. You will find people who spent their lives making things.

This is where you come from.

This is where we all come from.

Human beings have been creative beings for a really long time— long enough and consistently enough that it appears to be a totally natural impulse. To put the story in perspective, consider this fact: The earliest evidence of recognizable human art is forty thousand years old. The earliest evidence of human agriculture, by contrast, is only ten thousand years old. Which means that somewhere in our collective evolutionary story, we decided it was way more important to make attractive, superfluous items than it was to learn how to regularly feed ourselves.

The diversity in our creative expression is fantastic. Some of the most enduring and beloved artwork on earth is unmistakably majestic. Some of it makes you want to drop to your knees and weep. Some of it doesn’t, though. Some acts of artistic expression might stir and excite you, but bore me to death. Some of the art that people have created across the centuries is absolutely sublime, and probably did emerge from a grand sense of seriousness and sacredness, but a lot of it didn’t. A lot of it is just folks messing around for their own diversion— making their pottery a little prettier, or building a nicer chair, or drawing penises on walls to pass the time. And that’s fine, too.

You want to write a book? Make a song? Direct a movie? Decorate pottery? Learn a dance? Explore a new land? You want to draw a penis on your wall? Do it. Who cares? It’s your birthright as a human being, so do it with a cheerful heart. (I mean, take it seriously, sure— but don’t take it seriously.) Let inspiration lead you wherever it wants to lead you. Keep in mind that for most of history people just made things, and they didn’t make such a big freaking deal out of it.

We make things because we like making things.

This is where you come from.

This is where we all come from..." 

Gilbert, Elizabeth (2015-09-22). Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (Kindle Locations 775-793). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition. 

I agree: making things, creating! This makes us what we are and makes us happy! Very Happy New Year...  

 
Image Source: Elizabeth Gilbert's Facebook Page.

Creativity is a crushing chore and a glorious mystery. The work wants to be made, and it wants to be made through you.

—Elizabeth Gilbert. 

Video interview with Elizabeth Gilbert by Audible (added on 22 April 2020).

Video interview with Julia Cameron and Elizabeth Gilbert by How To Academy Mindset (added on 16 December 2021).

Momentum: Video interview with Elizabeth Gilbert by How To Academy Mindset (added on 16 December 2021).

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