What is Creativity?

We are very much familiar with the word ‘creativity’ and the literary community is in even more accession. My concern is about the notion of creativity since traditional educationalists and scholars have made very illogical foundations to the word creativity. They have categorized the jobs or work as creative and uncreative which I completely can’t agree upon.

I think no any work is already creative and uncreative. It is the way and process of doing a work that makes it creative. Writing poems, dancing, singing, painting, drawing are taken as creative task no matter the way they are done or performed. I think that a poem can also be uncreative and washing of floor can be rather creative. No task should be taken as creative rather the way or art of doing the task should be judged to call it creative.

How can we accept that poetry that is written with no joy and passion is a creative task? A work is creative if the performer or the doer is in tune with his work and does his job with utmost love, joy and passion. Creativity is directly proportional to the way you perform the task being in tune with your act and inversely proportional to the work that you do simply for fulfillments. The painter is in love with colors, the poet is in love with the words. All creativity is love. Sometimes destruction is also creativity. Certainly the sculptor has to destroy much. Chunks of stones have to be taken out of the rock, only then a statue will be born and revealed.

Music is pure creativity. Words have limitations, sounds have none. Words belong to particular languages. Sound is universal. Sound is the cosmic language. Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach, how you look at things.

Activity itself is neither creative nor uncreative. You can paint in an uncreative way. You can cook in a creative way. Sometimes doing nothing but sitting can be creative. Buddha, sitting under the Bodhi tree doing nothing is the greatest creator the world has ever known.

Whatever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing is not purely economical, then it is creative. All the religions say that God is creator. Hence what can be gained that the more you become creative, the more godly you become. That may be the reason why creative people have been closest to God like poets and painters. All creativity is basically musical. A poet writes poem and creates music in it. A singer and a painter create music in their songs and paintings respectively.