Creativity by Darylynn Starr Rank

When people ask me what I teach, I always feel a bit awkward when I try and answer them.  I usually say something like, "I teach courses called 'Finding Your Creative Voice'".  Or  "I work with people around their creativity." 

"Oh," they say, wondering why I couldn't be more straightforward,  "You teach people how to be creative."  I always wish I could answer with a simple 'yes'.   

But I can't.  So, instead (and feeling self-conscious about it ), I have to give them a little summary of what I actually do.  Something that sounds, to me, like a mini-lecture.

"No," I say.  "I don't teach people how to be creative.  I think they're already creative.  Naturally.  They're born with it.  And it's not something I could teach, in any event.  It has to come from inside." 

"So what do you do, then?" ask the impatient ones.

Well," I say, almost always stumbling a bit, "I help people figure out how to get in touch with their creativity.  The creativity they already have."

"But how do you do that?"  That's the big question I get asked.

Sometimes it's simply curiosity about  how to do it.   Sometimes it's a bah-humbug reaction to what they hear as 'airy-fairy' or 'new-agey' talk, like all those 'getting in touch with' ideas. 

Sometimes, however, it's a bunch of other things which I've gradually come to recognize.  It's frustration and helplessness, as in pleadingly, "How do you do that?"   Or it's sadness.  "Oh, really.  You can help people with that?  But how?  I'd really like to know."  Or it's anger, "Oh, yeah, how do you do that?"

I used to take the anger personally, until I realized that a lot of us feel angry at the world when we want to be creative but can't figure out how to do it, or we're prevented from it. 

I know I used to be.  Angry, that is.  And  frustrated, sad and helpless. 

When I was a kid I used to write.  All the time.  Stories and poetry.  Newspaper articles for the school paper.  And I always kept a journal. 

Then suddenly I stopped.  Dead.  Not a word.  For years.  And that's when I felt all those emotions.  Like a geyser with a lead-weighted meteor holding the gushing waters down. 

It was during the long, painful journey back to my writing that I started to understand some of the things that happen to so many of us.  Some of the things that get in the way of that natural creativity we all have.  There were dozens of things that were getting in my way.  Hundreds even.  And I had to pick my way through them, one by one, like searching for nuggets of gold in the sand. 

But boy, when I washed off the sand, and polished those nuggets up a bit, they were just the most beautiful things I could imagine.  (That's part of it, by the way, I 're'-found my imagination!)

So maybe, in the future, that's how I'll answer the questions about what I do.  I help people search for nuggets in the sand.

Take care all.

Darylynn Starr Rank (psychologist/writer) works part-time for Family Services of Greater Vancouver as a group facilitator. Her articles appear bi-weekly in The Record (New Westminster) and the Richmond Review.

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