Curiosity – First Step to Creativity

We human beings are born as curious animals. The first thing children do is to observe and explore their surroundings; based upon these observations they form images and ideas to make sense of their surroundings.

Once children know what is around them, they start to imagine the things those are not within their visual field, taking cues from sounds and other indirect perceptions. A child’s ability to imagine/dream things those are beyond their direct experience is the first step towards creativity.

• All human beings are born with finite amount of energy; to imagine and to dream we spare need energy. How much energy one can spare for imagining and being creative depends upon how much energy one is born with at the first place? You can always see/notice some babies can’t wait to get out their prams to explore the world beyond.

• Second factor is also equally important; the environment one is born in. I have seen many people who could be very creative, but they just happen to be born in the circumstances where they need to expand all of their energy to find food and shelter. They are hardly left with any energy to even to grasp and appreciate what is around them and leave alone being able to imagine and to create. You might have noticed many unfortunate factory workers walking though gardens full of spring flowers, but they simply walk past without noticing anything, simply worried about the day’s work. That is sometimes called fate.

• Third factor is the value system the society hands over to its next generation. In some societies, the rules of social order are defined so strictly that young people are almost yoked / harnessed into keeping their heads down and to keep working as directed by the social order. It happens more so with female members of deeply religious societies. The young people are hardly given a moment to raise their eyes to take in the enormous beauty nature has created around them.
As a result, only a small percentage of young people are lucky to be born with enough energy, into circumstances where survival doesn't need much effort, or they have fond a way to bypass them. They can also be lucky to be part of the social order that is open, liberal and conducive to creativity. Then one has all the tools one needs top start a creative life; then it is up to your own decision/initiative to pick up the torch and run.

Many people have talked about creativity; here are few quotations:

Albert Einstein
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."

Buckminster Fuller:
"When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."

Erich Fromm:
“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”

Nietzsche:
“You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.”

Oscar Levant:
“There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”

Pablo Picasso:
“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

Rita Mae Brown:
“Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.”

Robert C. Fuller :
“Spirituality exists wherever we struggle with the issue of how our lives fit into the greater cosmic scheme of things. This is true even when our questions never give way to specific answers or give rise to specific practices such as prayer or meditation. We encounter spiritual issues every time we wonder where the universe comes from, why we are here, or what happens when we die. We also become spiritual when we become moved by values such as beauty, love, or creativity that seem to reveal a meaning or power beyond our visible world. An idea or practice is "spiritual" when it reveals our personal desire to establish a felt-relationship with the deepest meanings or powers governing life.”

Theodore Adorno:
“A successful work of art is not one which resolves contradictions in a spurious harmony, but one which expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its innermost structure.”

V. S. Naipaul:
“I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years.”

Victor Hugo:
“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.”

Virginia Woolf:
“Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.”

Barthold Georg Niebuhr
“Another word for creativity is courage”

George Prince
“The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers”

Jean Piaget (Swiss Psychologist and pioneer in the study of child intelligence, 1896-1980)
“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.”
Mary Lou Cook (American community activist, calligrapher and author)
“Creativity is discontent translated into arts”