why is creativity still important?

Years always seem to accelerate as they get into their stride.

It’s another one where creativity feels like a luxury; there are so many things to worry about. I touched on this in an Instagram post back in February. What I wrote at the time still holds true, but I’m getting better at balancing my conflicting thoughts.

I carried the shadow around with me on my walk today; it nested in my stomach while the sun shone. I tried looking at the world upside down to see if it made any difference. It didn’t. I envied the roe deer the spring in their step, white bounce, brown flash. By the end of it the grey wind had won and the snow had started to fall. Even tears freeze today.

What I wrote at the time, the week that Russia invaded Ukraine, still holds true but I’m getting better at balancing my conflicting thoughts which at the time left me feeling guilty about allocating time to any sort of art.

So why is creativity still important to us?

One thing that has helped me with this, immeasurably, has come in the last couple of weeks as I started to re-read Nan Shepherd’s ‘The Living Mountain’. Nan writes about working on her manuscript during the latter years of the Second World War and just after:

"In that disturbed and uncertain world it was my secret place of ease."

How I wish I’d reread this in Spring 2020, or late February 2022. It’s not lost on me that at first reading the sentence floated over me.

How sad too that prevailing circumstances persuaded Nan to put her manuscript away in a drawer for 30 years. To think that such a wonderfully poetic book about place and nature might not have been published.

I’ve resolved not to put my own creativity away in the drawer. It makes too much difference to my happiness. It provides me with a place of ease.

This is why I think that creativity still matters.

Hidden in sight