CREATING A LIFE

There are many ways to think about creativity, the most common, perhaps, being the processes associated with the traditional arts: That which inspires a painting, brings about a piece of music, or inspires the building of a skyscraper. More essentially, creativity is the generation of something new- an ushering into being of that which was not there before. Most artists speak of this process as being greater than themselves. They emphasize an attitude of receptivity and being present to that which wishes to be born through them. The form is in the wood already and the sculptor carves away the unnecessary pieces in order to liberate the figure. The music is sung and the musician "just" records what he hears from within. The words “come through” the poet from a place that is “not her.”

Creativity is not limited to those realms we consider traditional art. Life itself is a work of art, and what many of us fail to realize is that we are all artists of our own lives. Each day, with the brush strokes of every thought, feeling, desire, intention, and choice, we find ourselves painting the lives we are leading.

I realize that it is easy for this idea to sound like a platitude- something which on the surface conveys hope but is in actuality empty of real meaning. I do not mean it in this way. The idea that we create our own lives is an immensely powerful one. It is one that inspires and empowers, but also unearths a deep sense of responsibility as well as our most profound fears. If we accept this idea, then we are left to own every thought, desire, belief, and action we put forth into the world. No more blaming others, circumstances, or our upbringing. It is how we choose to respond that matters, and seeing ourselves as victims of the world around us itself creates a specific kind of life—one that is likely to keep us disempowered.

Having said all of this, it is also important to acknowledge that taking responsibility for our lives is far from an easy or simple thing to do. Again, it means confronting those core fears that take up residence in our psyches at a very early age and remain there until we escort them out. It requires taking the risk of discovering whether those fears are, in fact, valid. In this way, the devil that rears its head in most of our lives is that of avoidance. I use the term devil to indicate that which tempts us to turn away from life: We tend to avoid those situations that put us in contact with our fears, which in turn, keeps us from living more vibrantly. If we fear dependency on others, for example, out of fear of being “swallowed up” by the other, then we may avoid those very situations that would allow us to discover this is not true, and we do so even as we say we are lonely. This is a very real example of how many of us create lives of loneliness. For others of us, the fear of being alone keeps us in relationships that drag down our energy, even as we complain of continuing to come upon negative relationships. Avoiding being alone at all costs for fear that we cannot survive there leads us to jump into not-so-good relationships, and with this choice we create certain realtionships, and lives, for ourselves.

Individuals who create the lives that they truly want to lead are those who choose to face core fears. There is something else, though, and it is related to what has been described thus far. That something else is ambivalence. It is not just that we’re afraid to confront our fears and therefore avoidant of situations that would help us to do so (and to thereby discover whether the fear is, in fact, warranted), but some of these fears are so deeply hidden within our psyches that we experience very real ambivalence about what we actually want in the first place. As an example, if I am really, really hot one steamy summer day and want to go in the water and am aware that I am afraid to do so, then I can talk to my friend about this dilemma and she can say: Just try it. You want to be cool. It will be okay, and you’ll be glad you did so. .. However, if I am so scared of the water that what I experience is “I really don’t want to go in, and I do want to be cool..”, then I am much further away from that conversation with my friend as well as from facing the fear of the water. I experience the fear in a covered-over way. I experience ambivalence-- I want two things at once. I want to move toward life and to move away from fear. In the moment, though, I don’t know I’m afraid, I just know that I feel trapped.

Feeling trapped is often a red flag that some deeply covered-over fear is operating within. Ambivalence is often a sign of the same. When you are feeling trapped or ambivalent, a very useful question is: What fear is at the core of this dilemma? Like the artists we are, we should not try to figure out the answer but rather make time for silence and stillness and see what we hear, feel, and sense. Like the artist, it is our task to be present, to receive that which arises within. And as with art, this is often a process that unfolds over time. There is likely to be a back-and-forth movement between confronting ambivalence, and the fear which underlies it, and becoming clear about what we really want for our lives. Like carving away the wood—little by little—to reveal the figure hiding within, we carve away our ambivalence as we confront our fears. In doing so, we gain clarity about how we really want to live our lives, and we can then manifest this way of being.

As artists of our own lives, each and every one of us can experience the frustration of the process, the challenge of the self-discipline required, the feeling of being alone in our creating, the excitement of birthing something into life, and the exhilaration of witnessing the creation once it is born. And c’est la vie. This is really all there is.