The Dichotomy of Creativity
Week 4 Journal
Over the past several weeks, I have been taking a deep dive into John Mark Comer’s phenomenal book titled, “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry”. Ironically, I have found myself in such a hurried season that I hardly have the margin to pick up the book. While the process of digesting its deeply impactful content is arduously slow, I find it beautiful and that it came at the perfect time.
A week ago, my best friend’s brother passed away. After a long fight with leukemia, they ran out of options. I knew him, not incredibly well, but well enough. The greatest pain in it all has been observing the hurt felt by my friend and his mom. A single mother, working diligently to provide for her three sons. The thought of the circumstance alone brings tears to my eyes. In the midst of this has come several parallel thoughts, seemingly tangential yet surprisingly threaded together in such an immaculate way.
Our Greatest Commodity
It seems that in the world in which we live there is one commodity that trumps all. You may believe it is time. I would disagree.
That precious resource that we so greatly take for granted is attention.
Every good marketer is after the attention of others. Gaining attention for a product, campaign, company, event, whatever it is. While time is important, time can be spent doing anything but if one’s attention is directed elsewhere, that time is meaningless. Take for example a university class. A student attending the lecture means nearly nothing if they are not paying attention. If they are scrolling Instagram or TikTok, working on other homework, or simply zoned out, the time spent in class was worth nothing to the intended goal of education. It is only when attention is given does time become something worth value.
So how does this play into eliminating hurry, apathy, creativity, or anything for that matter?
Bear with me and maybe we can find out together.
Apathy
Everyone is vying for attention. Social media apps are designed to keep people engaged, content creators work to get others to interact with their creations. The news has become no more than headlines designed to grab attention and spark controversy. With the constant bombardment of information yet no time to sit and ponder it, we lose sight of any meaning.
Take for example a simple walk.
The other day I took an entire day to not work. As a workaholic seeking the treatment of sabbath, I did well to take (most of) my day work free and strolled through the Denver Botanical Gardens. Whilst meandering around, living in a state bordering reminisce and absolute presence, it struck me the complexity of each unique plant. This might seem a silly thing to notice but it really impacted me. How many times do I walk in the forest, bike down the street, walk around campus and miss the intricate instilled beauty of everything? The more accustomed to something I become, the more information there is, the harder it becomes to stop and appreciate or even wonder over something. So in line with the book which I have been reading and my desire to enjoy the world, not merely watch it rush by like a hyperspace jump in “Star Wars”, I slowed down to admire each plant.
The more I stopped, photographed, and observed, the greater our ever-present reality of apathy began to dawn upon my conscience. With all of this vying for attention, we have come to a place of apathy. Atrocity has no meaning, rather it has become a means by which we signal virtue and moral superiority. Beauty becomes obsolete, a passing whim in a world of fantasy come to life. Sorrow, lament, mourning. They become things only to be distracted from, maligning with the ever deceitful pursuit of happiness which is so greatly craved and admired in post-modern culture.
With our attention being pulled like dismemberment of the mind, we lose our capability to truly care about anything, and with that, a sense of our humanity fades away. We lose empathy for those who lose a loved one. We miss the beauty in the mundane. We escape the present in a constant forward narrative thinking of nothing but what is next, searching only for a distraction, evading anything of substance.
Creativity
Creativity is an innate characteristic of humanity. This does not necessarily mean we all can paint magnificent works of art, or tell an inspiring story through film. We all have some creative capacity. Nearly everything we utilize on a day-to-day basis or consume for that matter is a product of our creativity. We have an infinite capacity to create and to make new.
Much of what we create is intended for a sole purpose: to satisfy.
We complicate our basic needs through creative alternatives, then develop new experiences in search of satisfaction, enjoyment, happiness. There is a reason people love to travel, try new foods, buy things on Amazon. I feel as if it is because we have an infinite and insatiable appetite. More is never enough. So as we create more, the more options we give ourselves. We misguidedly mistake novelty for satisfaction. Since we can infinitely produce novelty, grab attention, promise satisfaction, then grow desire for more, it seems that our world is trapped in an infinite cycle that only further leads us astray from true satisfaction and joy. We merely produce more apathy and in conjunction lose, whilst gradually, a piece of our humanity.
Satisfy the Insatiable
This next section will likely be viewed as the most controversial. If you disagree, great. After all, I am a fallible human being and the following is simply a conclusion resulting from the amalgamation of my thought processes.
Given this dichotomy of creativity, that is our infinite capacity to create to satisfy an infinite desire, how do we truly find satisfaction and regain our humanity?
I believe the answer lies not in novelty, but the primordial.
As a practitioner of the Christian faith and someone who aspires to ascribe to the teachings and life of Jesus, I believe that we were made intentionally, by God, for God, and as a reflection of God. The bible lays out two interesting narratives surrounding our innate desire for satisfaction:
The Creation Story
The Life of Jesus
First the story of creation.
In the Garden of Eden, everything was bliss. There was communion between God and man. A blissful living free from evil. In this place, this primordial state, there was satisfaction. Fear did not exist. Sustenance was abounding. Peace was ever-present. Whether this story is taken literally or as a metaphorical vignette of human nature, the point remains the same.
In a primordial place, void of our fallible desire to self satisfy, in the place where we were made to be, we can find peace and satisfaction. It was not until Eve and Adam saught to satisfy themselves that they fell into the fallacy of creativity. They looked to create a way to satisfy themselves. Yet what they lacked to acknowledge was that their design was to be satisfied by God and God alone.
Thus comes a thought surrounding creation. We can create, as stated before, to satisfy ourselves. OR, we can create to glorify God.
This is where we dive into the narrative of Jesus. Fully man yet fully God. Living in perfect unity with the creator is where peaceful satisfaction came from. Jesus understood that the world and its many novelties, while not inherently evil, hold the capability to distract us from our purpose. A jar is never utilized to its full potential until it is filled with something, just as we are never satisfied in ourselves until we are filled with that which we were created to hold. Why is it we expect something new we create to satisfy us if we were satisfied before any of it was created? Our desire, rather our need, is primordial. The more we allow distraction and apathy to take hold of our minds, the more we lose our humanity, our purpose, and the further we stray from the origin of satisfaction that existed long before any of us.
So what can satisfy the insatiable? I believe the answer is the most primordial, that which created us and understands us. It is only through God, through communion with Him. To satisfy we must turn away from our narcissistic, hubristic thought of self-satisfaction and return to the only place we were ever truly satisfied.
How?
So how do we do this? How do we reject the fallibility of the world and seek true satisfaction?
First, we must slow down.
Without slowing down, we continue in the aforementioned cycle of apathy. We must slow down enough to regain our humanity. Through this, we regain insight into who we were created to be, rejecting who the world so naively desires us to become. The more we slow down, the greater our capacity to see ourselves, to see the world, to understand, appreciate, grieve. We regain what it means to be human. We rediscover our created capacity.
Second, we must reconnect.
Reconnect with ourselves, the world, and most importantly reconnect with God. We seek after Him in His creation, His words, and His presence.
Third, we must surrender.
Surrender ourselves. Surrender our creativity and no longer create, or even live for ourselves. When we ignorantly live for ourselves it is as if we view the infinite expansion of creation through a pinhole. We live in such a hubristic manner, believing we understand the world. Yet the more we humble ourselves and seek, the greater the realization our seeming insignificance becomes. This drives us to take part in something greater than ourselves, something grander. We get to partake in admiring the one who is truly worthy of praise and enjoying the peace of living in accordance with the purpose given to us by our intentional creator.
Conclusion
Do you disagree? Does this shake your world? Does this anger you? Does this affirm your doctrine?
Good.
If it has led you to stop, good. I hope you ponder your creativity, your satisfaction, your purpose.
If you have any desire to talk more about this, any of it, or lay out some great fallacy in my thought please reach out! I’d love to talk.
And if you’re searching for your purpose, consider the following:
Reaching out to me, I love to talk
Check out this series of videos surrounding discovering your purpose:
