Warning: this is a mild bummer, forced up like a synthetic hairball; it contains little of the spontaneity it seeks to evoke

The pursuit of creativity (he begins pedantically) might sound like a frivolous add-on for somebody who already has enough and might want to enrich some downtime.  I could be drinking my own Kool-aid, but to me creativity is essential to just about everything.  Creativity is the life force, what makes our lives here possible in the first place, and as rich as they can be, no matter how otherwise poor, after that.

Why bother to invent a new way to say things when the old ones are tried and true, fine and dandy?  Because we need to, cleverness is a net gain, like a laugh, the difference between a grim march and a healthy hike.  Why do we laugh?  If I have to ‘splain it, Lucy, it won’t be funny.  We laugh because we hear something comically unexpected, or see something that surprises us and makes us lose it.  If the moment hadn’t been spun that way, by someone creating it just right, we’d still be yawning.

Creativity is a moment of grace that refreshes and restores the creator and the beneficiary of the creation, the aerialist spinning amazingly from one trapeze to another rather than plummeting to splat like a pumpkin as the crowd shudders.

Creativity is a moment of faith, taking a chance to do something new with belief in success.  It’s done with a freedom we might not otherwise see in our day.  

Lack of creativity makes us wince, someone trying to be original by imitating something many others have already done trying to be original.  Or when the attempt misfires like, for example, a mildly embarrassing moment from yesterday’s nice chat with an old friend.  This guy is very funny, and it struck me, toward the end of a serious talk, that we hadn’t had a single laugh, which is rare for a conversation with him.  The subjects we talked about had been serious, we were both concentrating hard.  My mind was sluggish trying to shift gears as I was reminded by something he said of a certain joke.  I asked him if he’d heard the one about…. and I dick-fingeredly handled the joke by the punchline to jog his memory.

“No,” he said with a smile.  I could hear over the phone that the same smile was there a few moments later, along with a slightly surreal laugh, as he acted like the punchline I’d already told him had been a surprise.  He created a little reaction to distract us both from the embarrassment of my moment of anti-creativity.

But how about the person somewhere down south who first described someone’s clumsy attempt to do something as being “dick-fingered”?

Supremely creative.  If you think about it, even for a hot little moment, you will realize I am right to extoll its importance.  Now go forth, be fruitful and multiply yourself, and have a nice day.