Living With Live Wires

Creativity is the underpinning, the basement, the foundation that permits talent to be realized. To be creative is necessary in the realization of a fulfilling life…

We are all creative.

Those who are more creative than others have learned to take risks, to value complexity, to see the world, or their own surroundings with naiveté.

What is unnatural and sad is for it to be repressed, suppressed, and stymied through the process of growing up and being educated.

What happens to most of us is that somewhere along the way, and often necessarily, we begin to distrust our creative self. Survival dictates that we subordinate our creative poetic self to a more practical, self. We go along and forget who we are or who we were.

While creativity is the natural propensity of human being-ness, creativity can be enhanced or also stifled. The creative personality can be developed and also thwarted.

Creativity takes certain habits of mind. Creativity is not separate from intelligence or from artistry, but part of the whole.

What is unnatural and sad is for it to be repressed, suppressed, and stymied through the process of growing up and being educated.

What happens to most of us is that somewhere along the way, and often necessarily, we begin to distrust our creative self. Survival dictates that we subordinate our creative poetic self to a more practical, self. We go along and forget who we are or who we were.

Jan Piirto, Ph.D.
Understanding Creativity (2004)

To me that is incredibly sad, and yet very familiar. I’m sure most of us can relate to feeling that the practicality of life and survival have entered into our lives and the creative side has had to take a back seat at times. And, in the past I’m sure we have encountered the cultural realization that some creative endeavors just wouldn’t pay the bills.

However, within the literature and within our society, there is a growing understanding and importance being placed on the integration of creativity skills into whatever field of study you are pursuing.

Creativity does not just refer to the exclusive fields of art, music and the humanities. Creators and innovators are in every field. Design is the ultimate catch phrase for every industry today.

[excerpt from my Minnesota Council for the Gifted and Talented State Conference presentation: Don't Fence Me In - Mastery, Creativity, and Adventure in the Home Education of Bright Children]