Slow down now blog

The more I think about slowing down, the more my thoughts veer toward creativity. The creative process needs time. Healing takes time. Growth takes time, so does learning something new.

The body has its own rhythms. If you injure yourself, how long does it take to get better? You can’t exactly plan a date in which you will be healed no matter how much effort you put in. The best you can do is to look after yourself, but the body will go at its own pace. It can’t be rushed. Time is the great healer.

Creativity needs unstructured time. But what is creativity? Is it creating something new? Is it originality? It certainly is generative. Sir Ken Robinson, a wise educator, says creativity is an imaginative process leading to original results that are of value.

Imagination is something that is innate, but also needs respect and cultivation. Imagination can easily be destroyed by a mechanistic education. Imagination is something authentic and personal. No one else can have our imagination for us. Creativity is a way of being in the world. It’s not goal oriented: it’s a process.

So what is this creative process? It starts off with activity without direction, or at least not much direction. It’s important to tolerate vagueness. Everyone’s process will be different. My experience is with painting, drawing, and writing. When writing, I make notes in my notebook. Some of these are sentence fragments. I keep a notebook by my bed. Some of my most imaginative ideas have come to me in that state between sleep and waking.

I don’t worry too much about grammar at this point. I can’t because I am sometimes half asleep. But I certainly do pay attention to grammar later on in the refining stage. Just getting words on paper is the first step for me. These initial ideas are the springboard to other ideas. There is a sense of play. This is a private world so I have complete freedom to write any way I please. How often do we get such freedom? It’s only later, after several revisions, does the completed work appear.

Only by not rushing to some pre-defined goal do I slow down enough to be present and play. And what is play? It’s trying things out. It’s practice. You see young animals playing at fighting and defending themselves. It’s preparation for adult life and it’s enjoyable. At least, kittens or puppies seemed to be enjoying themselves.

The direction comes from the process, it’s not something imposed from outside, like following a set of instructions.

Learning something new takes time. It’s easy to become used to instant gratification. Learning requires effort and perseverance. But what are our expectations for the amount of effort we must put in? It took a lot of effort to learn to walk. It took a lot of effort to learn to speak. Growing and learning are slow processes. If you enjoy the process, you’re more likely to continue to do it. If you’re in a rush to attain a specific goal and don’t enjoy the process, you’re far less likely to continue in that direction once you have fulfilled a requirement. How many people took the wrong major in college?

No one knows what the future will bring. It won’t be like the past. Seven years ago Google never existed. Who could have predicted the world we now live in? But one thing is for sure, we need imagination and creativity. For those things, we need to take the time to slow down.

Tags: Talk Back //