Appreciating Creativity...

WIthout Creativity, our world would be a far darker and more boring place to live.  I think about this every time I listen to a song that moves me, play an addictive video game, lose myself in a good book or watch someone else use their creative talents to their fullest.

An amazing friend of mine translates things from English to French.  She has done work for companies all across Canada, but this evening she helped me solve a dilemma for a nonprofit client of mine who has never done any French in their campaign before. Since New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province in Canada, it was high time they started speaking to both language groups about their project.

My friend has that rare and precious ability to take what is being said in one language and find the best way to say the SPIRIT of the same words in her own mother tongue.  In French we call that “l’esprit de la phrase”.  I sent her the English sentences and before I knew it, she had come up with a powerful version in French that gave me goosebumps.

Watching someone’s Creativity in action can be a powerful thing.

INHALE:  If we don’t treasure Creativity and appreciate it, support and reward it, then we run a great risk that the people who share their talents with us won’t be able do what they are meant to do.  If we continue to cut specialties from school programs, download or share things illegally on the Internet, under value the act of making things by hand,  measure a project’s worth by how much profit it can generate or how it can be licensed, then it may be that books don’t get written, songs go unsung or creative people give up and find “regular” jobs.  We need to make sure that doesn’t happen.

EXHALE:  This is an easy exhalation.  Take half an hour and submerge yourself in appreciating someone else’s Creativity in a way that doesn’t harm its creator.  Read part of a good book, play one of your favourite video games, listen to some great tunes or pop in a favourite movie and curl up with some popcorn.  Afterwards, take a few minutes to write down in your sketchbook or creativity journal what you did and what you appreciated most about it.