Being creative and cultivating creativity is crucial for our evolution. When we stifle creativity in favour of what is practical and pragmatic, passions are overlooked, our purpose is lost, and we suffer — our potentiality still dormant and unfulfilled.
Osho says “Creativity is the greatest act of rebellion” because it demands courage, imagination, and original thinking. After all, we wouldn’t even be here if Adam and Eve hadn’t gotten curious and eaten the apple anyway.
We Need Philosophers and Radical Thinkers
The trouble is, people are being conditioned for conformity and kids in schools are only receiving an education on how to shut up, do as they’re told, and sit still. Emphasis is placed on traditional academia and cramming heads full of facts and figures, the relevancy of which is often questionable. Our view on intellect is misdirected. Creativity suffers at the hands of budget cuts. Life skills are overlooked.
Whatever happened to enquiring minds and empowerment? We have become afraid of free thinking and fearful of failure, so we play it safe — not doing or saying anything that might make us look silly and stand out. We are too preoccupied with blindly following, getting it right and fitting in. Freedom of expression is in exile.
For this reason society is, quite frankly, fucked.
"The destruction of the world will not come as a result of a mass apocalypse,
but rather the apathy and malaise of man" – Unknown –
Stand up all those who crave carving a new path.
The Greek origin of the word Education actually means to bring forth and release what is great in the individual. A far cry from what we see in schools today, with its one-size-fits-all approach.
The truth is if you do what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve always got. The world is changing. The old ways aren’t working. We need to allow creativity to flow real quick. Without creativity, culture would be lacklustre and society, in sepia tone — a colourless palette awash with apathy and despondence.
Why Creativity Is Necessary For Success
We need to entertain the right-crazy-creative part of the brain in order for the human race to remain successful. Creativity is important because it takes us away from doing things ‘properly’ in a uniform way and towards doing it for ourselves, celebrating our uniqueness. It has become taboo because it is abstract and subjective.
To be creative, we have to call upon our intuition and trust it. When we’re doing something we’ve never done before, for the first time, there are no rules. We’re free to write them. We’re tapping into our ingenuity, harnessing our innovation, feeding our imagination and stepping into the unknown.
Be reasonable, be responsible, go for what is realistic instead of reaching for the stars – this is the message many of us got in school, because creativity requires us to become undone and see beyond the blockades that suppress what flows through us so naturally in our formative years.
Consider this; where would we be without the warriors and the rebels and the freedom thinkers and the revolutionaries that are our inventors, our scientists, our artists, our philosophers, writers, entrepreneurs and explorers who revolutionised the world?
Why Are We Here?
Why then, are we not teaching kids how to think for themselves? An Australian-born Inventor and physicist friend of mine recently said “The education system built for generating non-thinkers is failing. But challenging it is scary. It causes us to question what is it that we need to educate our children for? And answer – why are we here?”
It is only through our imagination that we can ponder possibilities. Imagination allows us to transcend time and space, and abolish the laws of physics. Through our imagination, we can live a thousand lives and visit a million places without having ever left home. It fuels our dreams, inspires change, and breeds compassion, empathy and understanding. It gives us the capacity to create our lives and shape our destiny.
Newton, like Einstein, rarely had the right equipment to perform his experiments so he used to imagine them instead. Many of his theories were devised this way before finally being proven.
The funny thing this is, both were written off at school and labelled as failures, like so many bright kids, because they spent their days, day dreaming out of the classroom window and being disobedient; bored, uninspired and un-stimulated by the curriculum on offer.
Do More of What You Love
For the salvation of our future, we’ve got to let our kids get out of their heads and into their bodies. We need to teach future generations the forgotten language of how to hunt and gather and grow and how to speak out and say what is on their mind, fearlessly – without apology.
Let them run and jump and play. Fall over and fail, so they can recognise failing is integral to success. Ignite a fire in them that encourages them to excel and live, rather than just exist, and instill a sense of self awareness that will help them strive for what matters to them most.
Instead of insisting on an education in academia, let us put equal emphasis on what makes us feel vibrant and alive. Allow interests to be indulged and strengths to be explored, because through the pursuit of interests, passions grow — and from passion, comes talent. Our talents are attuned with our true nature and our most authentic self. When we tap into them and begin to share them with the world, we become fulfilled.
Life takes on meaning and we make deeper connections and find our soul group, our tribe. And it is from this place that we discover our purpose and propel the world forward.
