I
believe creativity is a part of every person’s DNA. Each of us has a creative thread which may
present with the obvious – music, art, writing, sculpting – but goes as broadly
as: scrap booking, decorating one’s
home, cooking, baking, painting rooms, gardening, flower arranging. Creativity takes many forms; it’s a normal
outlet for all people and when acknowledged and allowed to flourish leads to someone
who is more of a total human being honoring all aspects of himself.
The only
way to discover one’s creativity is to try lots of things. You never know what’s going to click and
bring you joy. The other way is to have
some quiet, alone time to dabble. We
will never find our true selves, our true calling, our true nature if we remain
wired into technology and surrounded by noise and other people day and night.
It was
easier for me as a mother of introverts, whose natural tendency is to crave
some alone and quite time, to allow my sons the space to discover their
creativities. As mothers, I think this
is something very important that we allow to peek out from our childrens’
souls. It doesn’t matter if the child
shows great talent at it, although I find that if music is your passion, it’s
likely you are good at it. Otherwise,
the act of doing it wouldn’t be joyful to you.
Creativity
is one aspect of a whole person. It
doesn’t have to take over all they are, but why I advocate allowing it to grow
and bloom within children is that as they age, it may be a hobby that will fill
their time in a positive way because they may be practicing (and thereby in
kind of a meditative state), their self-confidence will increase as they
improve, and their stress levels will diminish by being released from the
rigors of their young lives and swept away alone in this way. Creating is such a release.
My son
and a friend, under the band name Kid’s
Gotta Do, have released a CD titled Parade.
Watching them create it, bit by bit, and then tackle the business side
of having it engineered, mastered, cover photographed, product mass produced,
and marketed has filled me with nothing short of awe at what these young men
are capable of. We wouldn’t know if we
didn’t step back and let them try.
Having
set the stage, the point of this blog post is about the other night when they
wanted to jam a little in our living room to begin prepping to do live
shows. Dave was on electric guitar with
my son’s new amp and his playing was ethereal, haunting and magical. Matt was on acoustic guitar and doing vocals. No microphone or pitch corrector was needed. Ben sat on the new percussion box beating out
the drum rhythms, tapping a cymbal from time to time, playing the shakers. Ben had never played with them and yet his
own drum work through his school’s jazz band allowed him to “go with it” and
make it work in a way which looked effortless.
When
they first started playing, I was blown away by how good they sounded together. My heart skipped a beat, I smiled broadly,
and I felt so grateful to being given the opportunity to witness in my sons
this deep creativity that has grown inside them over their years from a tiny
green sprout to a mighty stalk. I write
because I never want to forget what that moment felt like to witness this and
feel it within myself. Being witness to
your kids’ creativity is so deeply personal and touching.
