“Creativity is…seeing something that doesn’t exist already. You need to
find out how you can bring it into being, and that way be a playmate with God.” -
Michele Shea
According to Webster’s Dictionary, the definition of creativity is artistic or
intellectual inventiveness. Creativity is marked by the ability or power to create or
bring into existence, to invest with a new form, to produce through imaginative
skill, to make or bring into existence something new. When you create
something, you are actually bringing it into being, making it from nothing. But
how do you make something from nothing? How do you achieve creativity? What
is the essence of creativity?
Perhaps only magic can explain creativity, that sudden “aha!” moment
when it all comes together. Some have said that it’s something mysterious and
puzzling, perhaps impossible to figure out. Some have said it must be divine
inspiration. Creativity is simply thinking the impossible, and then doing what no
one else has done before, sometimes developing completely new worlds. If
you’ve taken a new approach to a problem and it works, then you’re using your creativity.
Creativity comes in many forms. It can be scientific creativity, resulting in
inventions or medical cures. It can be artistic or musical, resulting in beautiful
paintings, sculptures or operas and songs. It can be creative writing, resulting in
novels, short stories and poems. Creativity can even be as simple as arts and crafts, such as needle arts, yarn crafts, and woodcrafts - things you create with
your own two hands.
The important thing to remember is that creativity includes generating the
idea or concept, as well as applying that idea and producing or manifesting the
end product or result. Creativity or imagination is an integral part of being human
and separates us from the animal world. Carl R. Rogers said, “The very essence
of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge
it.”
