As an architect, creativity is part and parcel of my day-to-day life.  I have worked for people who were amazing with what and how they would create.  During school it was clear that creativity is not something that is doled out in equal parts.  Yet, we live in a culture that at once loves the creative mind and hates it.  You see being labeled creative is both a blessing and a curse.  Images of a one-eared Van Gogh haunt the would-be creative.  Who can live up to that standard, who would want to? 

I have come to believe that creativity is genetic.  Some of us are born with the gift, yet it comes in varying intensities.  But, I still think each and every one of us has some spark of creativity within us, it is in the foundation of how and why we were created.  Two of my daughters are a great image of this idea.  One has the ability to create worlds out of nothing.  Just give her an hour or so and she has the rest of the kids living out a fantasy.  The other daughter most times sits to the side when this creative chaos is underway, unable or unwilling to participate.  Yet there are times when she creates amazing things.  Or she finds an imaginative way to accomplish a menial task like cleaning the bathroom.  She has some level of creative impulse but it is expressed through ordinary things. 

As I ponder the future of my two daughters, I know the younger “creative” one will be blessed and hindered by her ability to imagine unseen and unheard worlds.  For my daughter that creates new worlds the “real” world is a confusing place.  She is unable most days to remember to complete the easiest mundane tasks of everyday life.  She seems to be out of sync with a world that values precise and controlled models.  At the same time one daughter struggles to survive the other goes through each day living a simple and ordinary life. 

For my younger daughter, life will be a confusing place most days.  No wonder she takes refuge in the worlds her mind envisions.  No wonder she spends most of her days in places no one may never know or understand.  I know as she grows and matures intellectually she will find ways to let others into her dreams.  Some days I pray she will find a balance in her dualistic existence.  Yet, there is something in me that says no don’t ever stop living out those fantasies.  Don’t stop meeting people and places only your mind can construct.  You see, there is a genius buried in that creative impulse that all of us need to survive this present danger we call life.  A genius that will someday inspire others to live a life that is fuller and more colorful than they can imagine. 

Can there ever be a balance for the creative mind? It seems not in our controlled and fear-filled world.  So if you are a creative person rejoice that you have a gift that will inspire, confound, enrage and embrace our careful ordinary lives.  It is your destiny to push the rest of us to worlds only you can imagine but want us to see and be inspired by.  Never stop trying to make the rest of us understand the things you see and know to be true.  Never let your creative self be usurped by a world that will never see the colors or hear the sounds that you do.  You see, if you stop pushing us to see that brilliance, we will all perish in a world of grayscale and squares.

John Wallis