The Creative Life

What is a creative life?

The whole point of a creative life is to live freely. When I say ‘freely’, I don’t mean a disillusioned life without struggle and worries. What I mean is waking up every morning with a sense of possibilities, curiosity and an awareness of one’s own capabilities. A discovered self-esteem through years and years of seeking and trying to understand your inner world. That which keeps your wheels turning and that which needs to be expressed, because you just can’t help it. Freedom comes from the realization that life comes as it wants and all you can do is just be prepared to receive it.

What does it feel like?

By creating you are giving an honest expression of who you are so that others can find their belonging — and it feels good! It feels good because we are all here to serve some higher purpose. And what’s higher than the recognition of our fellow human? It is that process of seeking and discovering, trial and error, failing and thriving that we become aware of our own journey. The path on which we process our own life and anxieties to be able to come to terms with them. The experience of life feels deeper, because every day you are trying to find meaning by understanding who you are and how you can bring value into the world. Art becomes a medium to make sense of life.

Where to start?

There is no list. No bullet points. No short cuts.

There is only a blank canvas and a pencil to start drawing. Some draw a picture, don’t like it and are afraid to come back. Others know that drawing is their only option, even when it turns out shit. So you keep drawing — every day, at lunch break, at 6am in the morning, on the bus to school — until one day you forget you’re drawing. You stop thinking and you start being that person who draws.

You eat breakfast, lunch and dinner but you also draw. Eating and expressing yourself are one and the same, they both feed you. When you feel bad, you draw. When you have a problem, you draw. Drawing changes who you are for the better. It’s like self-therapy. Through the act of creating we find a truth about ourselves where we recognize our own humanity. From then on we feel more whole, more human and ready to face life on our own terms.