Why We Become Afraid To begin let’s break down the words in the title of this book Courageous Creativity The word courageous means brave bold daring It also implies that there’s something to be afraid of and that in the face of that thing we need courage How about the word creativity Imagination inventiveness originality resourcefulness thinking outside the box problem-solving those are things that can be encompassed by creativity What about the word creative as a way to describe people like when we say Sara is so creative or I am not creative How have you heard it used What is creative about Being good at writing or drawing Having a vivid imagination Getting A’s on your creative writing assignments or in art class Winning a prize for a poem or a song you wrote Having what people call talent The opposite of the word athletic 10
Or sometimes does You’re so creative mean something else altogether Maybe sometimes it’s what people say when they really mean You’re lying You made that up Nice try Weird You did it wrong The word means a lot of different things both to people who say it and to people who hear it It can be a compliment or a masked insult An identity or a label An accomplishment or a failure My take is that creativity is both so much more common and so much more mysterious than any of our definitions can capture Think about little kids Put just about any little kid in a room with some art supplies some musical instruments and room to play and that kid will create A scribble a sound a movement Even babies who aren’t walking yet if given a couple of containers to keep them busy will delight in realizing they can create a noise if they bash the two containers together As kids get older you can ask them to imagine what’s behind a closed door or inside a box and that kid will create a story Why We Become Afraid 11
They make up songs they make up words they make up elaborate explanations for why the world is the way it is they want to play with ingredients in the kitchen and make something Sure some of that is imitation of the adults and older kids around them or a response to being encouraged to create but the bottom line is this No matter where you were born when you were born or how you were born you were born creative No matter what language you speak or what clothes you wear or how much money you have no matter whether you live in a house or an apartment or a car or a shelter no matter whether you live in a big city or in the middle of a cornfield or in a suburb you are creative No matter whether you like sports science math or reading or don’t think you’re good at any of those things you are creative No matter the size or shape of your body no matter the status of your physical or mental health no matter the color of your skin or eyes or hair you are creative 12 Part 1 You Are Here
We all use our creativity day in and day out even if we don’t think of what we’re doing as creative For example almost every day we will all use our creativity to do things like solve a problem make lunch pick out what to wear plan a birthday party play with siblings or buddies write notes or texts to friends in school post to social media complete homework hum or whistle around the house So if we all have this thing inside us and we use it every day why does creativity sometimes feel like something to fear Why do we need courage to bring it out in the form of some kind of artistic project like writing a story or poem drawing painting dancing or playing music If it’s something that came so naturally to us when we were little kids why does it now often feel difficult scary embarrassing or uncertain I think one of the main answers to that is that somewhere along the way we started evaluating what we used to just do for Why We Become Afraid 13
