The Call to Create

 The Call to Create

A Sixty-Word SZEN Story:

The first grader was handed a pencil and a piece of paper. Sally was instructed to grasp the pencil in her right hand and then told to press gently but firmly and to use cursive to write her name. And after some struggles she finished. It unfortunately resembled a Richter Scale. Sally switched hands and tried once more: Instant art.

And more…

We’ve all tried to accomplish something that seemed easy and clear enough in our head, but getting that vision to gel proved elusive? How many times did we try to create something that just didn’t want to come together? It’s always the same: We can’t find the word, or the color or the stroke or note that nets the masterpiece we see in our mind’s eye. So what do we do when the gem we seek to manifest is stuck somewhere inside us and can’t seem to find its way out? The answer is going to be different for each of us, and it might be as simple as what Sally discovered – Change something in the process.

Creating something new is always magic to me. And we all have our own magic wand to help us bring new ideas and beauty to life. I’ve observed the artist using pen and ink or watercolors or clay, and the writer with pencil and paper or keyboard and the guitarist sitting at the piano. All of them have the tools to let what’s inside them, out. And it’s just as true for the coach scribbling a play on the chalkboard. The delivery of our creative thinking has to have a way to be channeled into reality. It can be whatever helps us share what’s in us. It’s the sharing that brings our ideas to life.

And the easiest of all tools we might want to use when we feel creative and want to share, is our own sense of purpose. Knowing why we’re here, and our calling, creates the desire to make an impact and difference, which is at the core of creativity. It’s the driving force for all things new. It can turn a Richter Scale scribble into the word Sally, our ideas into reality and change our creative expressions into life changing moments.

Szenippet: We all are called upon to create. To envision what does not exist and let that vision find its way to life through us.