For the longest time, I pondered on why I never gave up creating — drawing, writing, ideating, dreaming. Rather, why creating held on to me and pushed me through my lowest, being my trusty companion in solitude and at the peaks of life. Not just figuratively, but quite literally too.
An idea conceived and acted upon is like a baby: dedicating time to grow and cultivate it requires commitment. Maybe there wasn’t a specific reason at the point of penning it down. Why bother when these things are but figments of imagination (and maybe plausibly better off living in one’s head sometimes), and what is the significance it can play in one’s life? Sometimes it takes awhile for us to find our answers in the sea of unending questions. Acting before you do is an impulse, a reflex in response to the environment, perhaps, an instinct. For a being that connects with life through these conceptions, think of creating as if it were part of your vestibular system, which functions to help one stay grounded and balanced.
In the greater scheme of things, creating is but one jigsaw piece in the puzzle.
A recent turn of events took me on another reflective journey, and here is a walkthrough on the process of self-discovery, and this is what the process means:
Being accountable to oneself
The urge to draw comes in waves, and if unfulfilled, leaves one wallowing in the misery of restlessness.
As with any obstacle in one’s way, if it were a problem obnoxious enough that you want rectified, once and for all, ample time would be dedicated to ensure that its root cause is identified and addressed so relapses do not occur. Confrontation isn’t the easiest thing to deal with, especially if it means you have to realise, acknowledge, and overcome weaknesses.
Entering into the realm of creation is firstly, about crafting an enabling environment of a perceived, safe space — for one to try, experiment, attempt and achieve.
Introspective deep-dive on thoughts ahead, but if this is your jam, stick with it and let me know what you think!
Sitting with discomfort
It’s no easy fit to acknowledging that it takes time for something to be in-progress. At first, the process of creation may be uncomfortable because it is something we are less than used to: society’s fast pace has resulted in impatient humans conditioned to be executing and taking action at an expected speed. Slowing down is especially foreign concept to urban creatures in concrete jungles.
However, doing so veers you off-track from societal’s norm. Going forth in this direction divorces you from society’s expectations that would have remained as your reality if you stuck with the path you were familiar to.
New territories: Venturing into the discomfort zone
This means unlearning what you are used to, and then chartering into new terrains. Your personal threshold is put to the test.
At this point, a trade-off has been made, and you’ve chosen to put yourself through it, whether wittingly, or not. What is forgone is the present, time on hand. This is in exchange for optimism, in the form of hope and a more enlightened future (although not consciously knowing it there and then).
Away from the bustle of the city as you continue on the quieter path, there is no one there to judge you — except yourself. Is that voice, the one you hear as you read this, guided by your heart and mind, or is it by guilt that is creeping up disguised as another’s?
It could be fearful not to have another’s voice to reinforce or discourage your actions. Where do you go, what do you do, how do you keep track of things and stay afloat?
The list of questions is non-exhaustive, but hey! We are now allowed to ask — on the basis that we permit ourselves to do so.
In a sitting of creation, one draws themselves the boundary of a safe space.
Questions are an indicator of curiosity present, and perhaps an extrapolation of willingness in propensity to try, if acted upon. From awareness on thoughts conceived, it could be cultivated into an idea, and transpire into action, which could ripple an impact — if positively done so, it thus builds a multiplier.
Like in the days of elementary school, a child in discomfort tells you they are hurting in their stomach… even if they were sad. You’re not that child anymore — you now have a wealth of experiences and depth of emotions felt in the years of living. When was the last time you felt this sort of pain, and the last three encounters with it? Confront the roots of where this stems from: It could be the loss of esteem, the setting back, etc. There’s no one root cause for sure.
Unless you are willing and able to confront where the source of resistance stems from, it is unlikely that you would take the next step forward. But if you’ve already deviated this far away from the norm, built yourself a space safe enough to listen to the inner voice within, what other reasons (or excuses) hold you back from moving forward?
Now you have an enabling environment: To try, or not to try?
Failure can be a pain. But hey, what exactly does pain mean?
Whether the outcome of a product created sucks or not doesn’t matter — the journey is of priority. If I had failed, an experience sends me to reflect and identify the points of failure: did I fail to plan? More often than not, two “f” words more vulgar than the f-word we know sets us back from success: fear, and fail.
Judgement from those around in the external surroundings have hammered the repercussions of failure, into us beings, so deeply that it causes our internal core to rumble at the labels nailed around unmet expectations, and hence, fear sets us back from taking that leap into success.
Rather than listening to what people have to say, these boundaries set my mind clear on where my joy is derived from, and what success means to me, based on definitions that I have defined for myself.
Limitless growth
Then there is growth once more, as we realise that is so much more to be discovered in this world, and different permutations on life through different perspectives.
Kindness, a kind of ‘yes’
Having your wants heard is one form of kindness to yourself, it is catharsis on thoughts. Whether you choose to take action afterward is another question. We have been conditioned to be so goal-oriented these days, that it feels almost uncomfortable to allow the mind and thoughts to wander. But like children not being able to get their ice cream, it creates restlessness… which may be more detrimental than the constraints that you’d initially set out to stay focused.
Self-awareness, self-discovery
Rather than merely executing based off instructions or routine, you are giving yourself an opportunity that often goes by unheard. As you recognise your personal needs, the weight and pressure of societal expectations, whose voice is now miles away, is lifted off your shoulders.
Mindfulness
As you say yes to yourself, you are permitting growth to happen, and that breeds a greater consciousness within: towards every action, response, mechanisms. This, too, brings discomfort from feeling self-conscious, just as how we sometimes feel when we find ourselves in an unfamiliar crowd.
Are we more afraid than other’s judgements? When forced to be alone, substitute “others” with yourself. Are you afraid of your personal judgement?
In a world where we were babies, judgement never existed. We learnt through positive and negative reinforcement from a series of actions. But what if we could put our adult-selves into a world where we are all, but infants who know not what it means to err?
Existing & being.
When you take it upon yourself to create and oversee the process of incubating something, you are the epitome of existence.
No need for justification, reason, nor comparison
Anything in excess brings upon one’s downfall. Justification, reason, and comparison are all forms of measurement and rationalisation, and forces you to ask yourself what is its practicality and need — more often than not, in context of the present.
But they are not indicative of an unprecedented want that could eventually become a need. Remember all the times you allowed your needs to take precedence and swept your inner voice on wants under the rug, simply because it wasn’t a priority?
Allowing to simply let be
Like a baby undergoing the process of teething, we are nonetheless in familiar shoes. Sometimes it aches, and we don’t exactly know why… except that it is mother nature taking its course.
And eventually that phases out. The process of creating occurs naturally, and cycles through just the same.
One day, you realise — paving the new path of a meander is probably a lonely journey, but that doesn’t cause the river to hold back and flow backwards because that is against the laws of nature. There is so much that makes the meander what it is: from the loads it carry through, to the energy (think, bandwidth), and the list never ends. But humans are no less the same — if you factor in the fact that we are 75% water, after all.
Solitude: a serendipitous by-product
Life is beautiful, in this process it places us through: I found companionship in the best and worst of myself through the process of creation.
Could I afford to get angry at myself for failing to meet expectations of recreating what I had envisioned? Absolutely. Were there times that I was? Yes. On the other hand, were there times that I celebrated wins that I found nuggets of wisdom and value under the stones unturned? Nonetheless!
The Window Experiment that was birthed when the circuit breaker effected was one such example: feeling restlessly uninspired and grieving at the loss of freedom while dealing with cabin fever was a handful of feelings to deal with. With nobody to meet or discuss about the complexity of emotions and layers of thought, I tapped into the reserves of art by other artists. I found inspiration and comfort from Henry Jamison’s Gloria, the lyrical poetry of Ben Gibbard and Brazzaville about life in different sides of the world, and times of existence.
It wasn’t even anything fancy that drew me to start drawing, except the simplicity of a view that was used as album art. It was at that moment that called out to me to recognise: you don’t have to look too far to search for inspiration… there is truly, beauty, all around, if you bother to observe closely.
We have between 50,000–70,000 thoughts per day, this means between 35 and 48 thoughts per minute per person. The steady flow of thinking is a thick filter between our thoughts and feelings, our head and heart. — Huffpost
Most of these thoughts go by unattended or unaddressed, especially when we make the conscious choice on mindless consumption to simply achieve instant gratification.
Recalibrate: regaining balance and staying rooted
Over a recent conversation encircling artificial intelligence, natural language processing and robots analysing sentiments of human, it was acknowledged that the smartest robots are, unfortunately, stupider than the lowest form of humanity. They can imitate intelligence, yet cannot replicate intelligence.
In the bulk day-to-day of routines, we choose sometimes to give up thinking because it wears us down, and executing seems to speak louder to planning. Why then, are people-centred organisations looking into a more “human” approach, with the “human touch”, seeking “thought leadership”? What, even, do these phrases or buzz words mean at all?
Where the world we live in assume that all resources are scarce, think of the thoughts conceived: they are in abundance. It is only whether or not we are willing or not to dedicate time and energy into something of a perceived value. The greatest overlooked asset in an individual is a positive mindset, where positive thoughts breed positivity.
And this what creating does: it gives you power to define a neutral and original thought into something positive, churned into greater positivity, and impactful enough to stir a ripple effect, regardless of how small a being you are or perceive yourself to be.
