A friend recently shared a post about my Craft Happy journey on social media with the caption, “she is sharing her gifts with the UK” and it never ceases to amaze me how encouraging other people can be. It also reminds me when another friend showed one of my pictures to a teacher colleague and it was used as part of an assembly about creativity being a gift from God.
Whatever your religious beliefs are, I would certainly agree that creativity is a gift. Being creative is the act of expression and when share something that sits within ourselves, this is our legacy. It can apply to almost anything… music, something visual, our personality, our appearance, a new life… I would argue that without exception, anyone can indulge in the act of creation and anyone can share it.
But not all of us do. Sharing a part of ourselves is daunting because we put it out there for the judgement of others. However, until we try it, we do not experience the trade-off which is how empowering and liberating it also feels. Creativity breeds creativity, others recognise the effort involved in putting oneself at the mercy of judgement and will go out of their way to encourage it. Our output also gives us a feeling of pride and the process reminds us of carefree childhood days, the pressure-free honing of new skills
And what becomes of the gift? Well I guess that’s the choice of the recipient. Some will ignore it completely, others might use it to spark their own creativity, some will be interested in following the journey and some will see the beauty of the outcome. There will be followers who never buy it and that is OK too because profit alone should never be the sole reason for creation.
If there is one thing I have learnt in the last year it is that the process is more important than the outcome and you should never wait until you feel you have something worthy before you jump on board. You will probably never actually reach the state where you feel you have produced your best work, only ever your best work ‘so far’ but the more you are immersed in that journey, the better it gets. Don’t wait until you are fully satisfied with something before putting it out there for judgement because you will tinker with it forever.
Produce it, share it, allow it to be judged, ask the questions, learn the lessons, be intuitive to the feedback and feed it back into the learning. If it’s inside you…. let it out and share it, let the world become a better place because of it.
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