What It Means to Be Creative--Chapter 4

This particular essay really stood out from the other ten we’ve read through this quarter. Though it’s the shortest, it really defined one of my aspirations better than I’ve ever heard it defined.

To be creative is more than painting a picture. It’s thinking of something original from anyone else, something that makes people make a double-take, so people say “Why didn’t I think of that?”
I loved how Hayakawa described that average people don’t read their emotions as well as creative people because they feel what they think they should feel. Not what they actually do feel. Or they appreciate something based on their denomination, stereotype, or political party. For most, it’s a thin line between what you do feel and what you should feel. But it’s clearly drawn for those with creative souls.

Creativity is definitely something I strive for. Unfortunately, the harder you try, the more impossible it is. I always try to make a formula for it, instead of just letting the creativity flow out of my head. I’ve found that when you’re most relaxed you write the best. Personally, I prefer to write just before I go to bed.

The most encouraging characteristic of creativity Hayakawa described was “idle curiosity.” Curiosity is like my sixth sense. I love knowing things. If I’ve given a clue, I tackle it and milk it for all it’s worth.

A specific example of what dams up my river of creativity is the inability to trust myself. The author quoted a Dr. Hans Selye about how the most brilliant scientists went with their instinct over all. I like the comparison to scientists because I envision a clean white lab with chemists and physics professors bustling about, trying to discover the meaning of everything. Theoretically, every day is an experiment for us. Learning, trying new things, analyzing, without thinking about it.

Hayakawa wanted us to view creativity through the eyes of the scientist and see that it can relate to anything and everything in daily life.

Writing Strategies
1. Describe the strategy Hayakawa uses to help the reader to understand the term "creative." That is, how specifically does he make the term clear to the reader?
I really appreciated the way the author described creativity. He gave specific examples that anyone can relate to. We've all thought "Why didn't I think of that?" Hayakawa said that a creative person goes beyond what everyone knows already, doesn't limit him-/herself to the confines of other (i.e. political parties), and has open-minded curiousity. He also uses other sources, like Dr. Hans Selye. His most important point that really defines creativity is that it can take any form, even a supermarket layout. So even the average Joe can be creative.

Exploring Ideas
3. In what ways is writing an essay an act of "creativity"? List Hayakawa's main points (or characteristics) of creativity and apply them to writing an essay. Which ones apply? Which ones don't?
To write an essay that is worth reading, you need to use creativity to come up with something new to bring to the reader. There are so many cliches in society, that to grow, we need more material. Viewing writing as a maturing process, we need to recognize our feelings and interpret our thoughts to do so. This is a creative point.

Another characteristic of creativity is not allowing yourself to be confined by roles. Whether religious, polical, stereotypical, etc. In writing, you do need to stay with one point of view, otherwise the text can be confusing. You have a role as a writer that you can swing right and left.

Playing with ideas that are often construed as silly or foolish make the best writers. Lewis Caroll had simply insane ideas (often from insane doses of drugs) as does Shel Silverstein. Nearly anyone can be persuaded towards an unfounded notion if the argument is creative enough.
But when you don't have an argument that can sway the masses, creative persons but be strong enough to stand alone and not conform.

My favorite trait described of creativity was the curiousity. This is one of my favorite words and little did I know how it could relate to what I hope to attain! When it comes to writing, research is frequently involved, but the deducing of information gathered is where the creativity comes in. You can have all the frivolous information the world has in its tomes, but if you can't connect them to life, they're useless.

Going with your gut feeling is the final trait of creativity that can be easily linked to writing, the most obvious being sentence flow. It's not a structure you can exactly follow, having shorter and longer sentences strung together. Sentence flow is just a rhythm that you feel while you write.

XXL Ambition--Personal Narrative

Finding life-long inspiration can be quite a feat. Sometimes the goals we do have are too small because we’re too scared that we will fail if we dream too big, we’ll fail. It’s usually in the most unlikely of places that we find our goals: in a text message, in a play, in a glance, or even in a dream. Little things can open our eyes to the bigger dream God has for us.

I never had dreams growing up. Some know before they lose their first tooth that they want to be doctors, actors, teachers, and basketball stars. I never had that. I let everyone tell me to pursue this or that because I was too insecure for my own notions. If half the class wanted to be astronauts, I would too. If they wanted to jump off a bridge, I would have. If they wanted to travel the world, I did too. Elementary school for me was a big game of “Follow the Leader”.
Eventually I learned that you don’t fit in by being exactly like each other, so in junior high, when my friends said they wanted to be writers, I said I wanted to be a journalist. Not much progress there, but it is a step up from being a twin.

My first two years of high school, I became what everyone needed me to be at the time. I was the comforter, I was the ditz, I was the grunt who did the dirty work. In short, I played the let’s-be-a-doormat game a lot. I had somehow developed the sense that my emotions complicated situations and I needed to shut them off for others who had bigger problems. I admit it took me a long time to know what I wanted to do with my life and it wasn’t a huge explosion of understanding. My dreams came more like small doses of medicine, but my first revelation occurred last summer before my sophomore year.

It was at a summer camp held by the American Cancer Society to promote Relay for Life and anti-tobacco campaigns, and it made ambition bubble inside me. SpeakOUT summer summit was the first time that I had non-stop festivity without a single social burnout. I get those more than most. The moments when you’re with a group of people, friends or otherwise, and you grow tired of their company; you get the urge to go crawl into a closet and read.
I’m the type of person who doesn’t like big gatherings because everyone is competing to be in the spotlight. I personally don’t like being the center of attention, but I don’t appreciate others acting fake to get there. Because of this, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to SpeakOUT, but I went anyway in hopes of building up friendships.

Friends I had at the camp were great, but I was still worried about alienating myself from them. Not being Christian enough, witty enough, spontaneous enough or just doing something insipid that would make them want to exclude me from their delicate circle.

The last day of the conference, the board members were awarding campers “Most Charismatic” and “Best Sense of Humor” and other amusing titles. I kept thinking to myself that if I had known there were awards I would have shown more passion for the activities and been more into the discussions. At the very end though, my name was called to accept an XXL fiery tie-dyed shirt with a sketchy Earth painted in the middle. It read “I’m gonna change the world!”

The T-shirt was awarded to me by Tessie Goheen. Tessie had cancer run in her family: all of her immediate family had been diagnosed with it. Both her sisters had cancer at a young age and she had to take care of them by herself when she was sixteen, because her dad died when she was eight and her mom was in the hospital. She had a sweet spirit and I respected her for her challenging life that seemed to have left her unscathed. Tessie Goheen had probably seen more trauma in her life than anyone I have met, and she picked me out of a hundred teenagers. I don’t even know what I did to catch her eye.

Since all those months have passed, without realizing it, there was a subtle change in me. My priorities slowly shifted. I stopped settling for less and I began to stand up for my beliefs. I have more faith in people’s power as individuals also. After receiving the humongous T-shirt, I no longer feared losing my friends. I had license to be myself because I was going to change the world. And if I could, why couldn’t Sam and Matt? Why couldn’t Emily and Pauli? It really opened my eyes to the potential of the individual. And all it took was one person telling me I could. In fact, it took a complete stranger to tell me.

I want to be a Tessie Goheen. I want to inspire people to change the world. I want to be the teacher that everyone remembers fondly, the one that made so-and-so become a scientist. I want to be the girl whose testimony led someone to believe. I want to be the one who makes others want to give to the poor or donate to Relay for Life. I want to be the pianist that made five year old Nicholas start practicing. I want to be the definition of inspiration.
When Tessie held out that huge T-shirt to me, it was like God telling me to dream bigger, that I have a brighter future than I can imagine. I felt like Frodo being assigned the huge task of saving Middle Earth.

All my life, I’ve been trying to be what others expected me to be I wanted to be professional, mature, a prodigy. When a stranger saw something bright in me, I knew that I didn’t have to fit the mold anymore. People will accept me as I am if who I am is myself. And if they don’t, that’s okay too.

It took me 15 years to start realizing who God made me to become. Not a model, not a maestro, not a businesswoman, but an ordinary girl with big hopes. I don’t have a dream dreamt for me. I have a dream of my own. I want to change the world, inspire people to make their life and community better. I want to give a box of chocolates to the widow down the street; I want to give my coat to a homeless person; I want to adopt a highway; I want to be a mother to the abused. I have a passion for compassion, and no one can take my dream away.

That shirt is now hanging on my wall as a constant reminder never to hinder myself with my own goals. The shirt could read “Your dream is too small!” for all that matters; it means the same thing to me. It reminds me that God has dreams far bigger than we can ever imagine. Often when we set goals, they are too safe, too easy, because we’re afraid that if we set the bar too high, we’ll fail. These “safe” goals do just the opposite of what goals should do. They hold us back so we don’t have to try as hard to reach it, instead of inspiring us to be challenged and stretch beyond our imagination.