Creativity Is Childs Play

To be more childlike, you don't have to give up being an adult. The fully integrated person is capable of being both an adult and a child simultaneously. Recapture the childlike feelings of wide-eyed excitement, spontaneous appreciation, cutting loose, and being full of awe and wonder at this magnificent universe.

- Wayne Dryer

I still vividly remember my years as a kid without a care in the world and no agenda in mind except play and fun. As the years ticked by, this mindset started to get replaced by cultural norms. No longer was it deemed acceptable to take life as it comes, you needed structure, security, and spend your waking hours putting money in the bank. These things in and of themselves aren’t problematic, it’s when they start to encroach on our ability to enjoy our humanity that things can unravel. I’ve started to feel this encroachment grow stronger over the last few years, like the seas of time eroding my ability to be full of wonder and excitement. The question then becomes, how can I overcome this complacency and be more creative? The answer, be more childlike.  

Children have an unbridled ability to be creative as they are always curious, unrelentingly observant, and remarkably playful. The engine of this power seems to originate with the imagination, for every child cultivates an intimate knowledge of how it works. For them, anything is fair game. The playground becomes a castle fit for a king and worth defending till the very end. Or a desert oasis waiting for the weary traveler to dip his toe in its refreshing lake. For many of us, we fail to cultivate this resource into our adulthood, and we pay the price for it - literally. For our current industrialized system is set up without the need to use imagination or even creativity. Everything can now be bought, turning adulthood into a never-ending sea of consumerism stifling creativity and breeding conformity.

In my navigation of these waters, I found my imagination drowning in the waves. The life preserver came in the form of a quote by the famous Albert Einstein who said, “I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.” I now understood the potential of this tool as being not only the fuel to invigorate my creative process but something I could tap into my inner child, recapturing the awe and wonder of life. 

My imagination has opened up and an infinite set of possibilities, allowing me to freely play with thoughts and ideas in the womb of the universe. Creativity plays a big role in the foundation of childhood, and it only gets sweeter as we grow up, that is if we don’t let the weeds of adulthood choke it out.