Gift From The Sea

To often I have been finding in my recent reading we focus on ‘invoking the muse’ rather than actually ‘being creative’. Everyday there is another book published about how to become or get creative.  Rather than the fluffy titles that the books now have, they should read "How to be Creative in Just Three Easy Steps!".  The more technological our society becomes, the more we feel the need to streamline everything, and lately (or I have noticed especially so lately) that everything includes creativity.  Problem is, creativity cannot be streamlined.  Sure we may add more things into our lives as technology allows us to do so, but the more distractions we add the less creative I feel we become.  Technology does not free our lives, rather it demands things to happen rapidly.  We are trained to be impatient.  Then these "Get Creative in Three Steps" become necessary.  Recently I have picked up a book by Anne Morrow Lindburgh called "A Gift From the Sea".  It is an older book, but a treasure nonetheless.  Even though she too writes about creativity, she does not give you a formula or tell you how to reach that ‘state of creativity’.  Rather, this book can be seen as a short series of blog entries on her vacation where she muses about creativity and living.  Her observations are keen and I feel still pertinent today as technology just began making a big place into people’s lives with the airplane, electric lights, and telephones in her time:

"One never knows what chance treasures these easy unconscious rollers may toss up, on the smooth white sand of the conscious mind; what perfectly rounded stone, what rare shell from the ocean floor.  Perhaps a channelled whelk, a moon shell, or even an argonaut.  But it must not be sought for or — heaven forbid — dug for…The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too gready, or too impatient.  To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith…One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach — waiting for a gift from the sea."  Anne Morrow Lindburgh

There are times where individuals/writers/artists struggle with their routines or to better describe it, feel uncreative, but that isn’t the time to buy a new book (Even though I do mention this fabulous book today).  It is the time to focus on yourself.  Find time to get away and find where your creativity may have fled (if it even did).  Another bookful of colorful poetic catchphrases, gimmicks and how-to’s is not going to do the trick to making permanent necessary changes.  Those changes really only come from yourself. 

-Rachel