Some months ago I was reading an article online relating to people following their creative passions in life more. The
out cry they were anticipating was for everyone to start saying but we can't all be artists. And the people who would be
saying that are completely right. I actually live in area where there are a lot of artists, way to many, and the big
city near by has actually been fairly unfriendly to the tech industry and the sciences, and the competition in the field
of being an artist something there is not shortage of because the arts is the only field they've wanted to be friendly
toward.
Living in this area where we have way to many artists and we aren't nearly so over saturated with the science and technology
people (at least not to my knowledge) it was yet another deterrent to my professional choice to become an artist I can tell
you that the economic reality is that not every person on the planet can be an artist. Of course chances are if everyone who
loves farming gave that up to become technology professionals we'd discover that not everyone in the world can go into the tech
industry right about the time we started getting hungry. When it comes to economic reality we can't all do the same thing and
humanity shouldn't try to, after all if we all went into agriculture we'd eventually discover we still needed people to make
clothing and keep house. Since humanity should already have figured this out several thousand years ago let's skip back ahead
to the present day economy and that of the future.
The anticipation of the out cry that we can't all be artists brought something up for me, a little piece of unconscious programing
from back in my childhood. I always got the impression when people talked about being creative they meant creative to be synonymous
with artistic. The weird thing is that if people programed that into my brain it shouldn't have stuck. I grew up two creative parents,
one in the arts and one who used work in the creative side of the computer field. I can confirm that there are creative people who
don't want to create art, I've lived with one of them.
When it comes to following your creative passion not everyone can be an artist and not everyone wants to be one. In a lot of ways
it's a pretty limited, and limiting point of view to assume that the arts are the only creative thing in the world. My
artwork isn't my only creative passion, there is a lot that I still want to do with computer
programing, and possibly inventing along side my artwork down the road, and yet I'm having to
remind myself that actually doing the coding my own website is in and of itself a work of creativity. I think it goes without saying
something is wrong with that picture. What disturbed me even more than was the fact that as I
was reading that article I was realizing that the concept of what being creative being the same as being artistic was a program buried
in my subconscious , I didn't even fully understand that it was there until I was reading that article. With my background it that's one
program that shouldn't have stuck imagine what a person without a background of being around people who pursued professionally or
even all that actively creative actives outside the arts.
This is without even diving into the fact that not everyone wants to be an artist. Yes for me what I do with my
artwork is a lot of fun, every part of the creative process is a part of my
life that if I had to stop would be just missing irreplaceable, but for someone else they probably couldn't imagine
doing this kind of thing, or wanting to. On the other hand there are a lot of things that I can't imagine doing or
wanting to do that other people probably can't imagine their lives without. True my artwork
isn't the only thing I can describe that way but everyone probably has more than one thing in their lives they feel that way
about. As creative passions go it's really not just for artists, it's for everyone in every field, people getting creative
in their field is a big part of how humanity has as much as it does today (and we'd have a lot less if people we're willing
to get creative in every field) the idea that creative is just for artists is something that society really needs to throw
out the window and never bother with again.
So the next time you think about creativity, or pursuing a creative outlet, or following your creative passions remember that creativity
is for more than just artists. It's for everyone in every field and the next time you find yourself thinking that creativity is limited
to the arts or even just to a small number of fields remember that pesky little assumption is a program placed in your subconscious by
other people who clearly don't understand how much creativity goes into every other field there is, or worse do understand and don't
want humanity to continue to do more, be more and have more.
|
