A Creative Life is NOT a Stress Free Life

One should never confuse the meaningfulness that a creative life can bring with there being a lack of stress or tension.

There is a famous story attributed to Norman Vincent Peale, where he offered to show a man suffering from anxiety, a place where there were 50,000 people without a worry in the world. He drove the man to a hill overlooking the largest cemetery in Brooklyn. Peale makes the point that no one alive is completely free from stress or worry.

The Buddha's famous saying is; "All Life is Suffering". In that everything you love including your own life will pass away and the loss of those beloved leads to great suffering. The Buddha's advice is to transcend the suffering not to take a pass on living or on loving.

Dale Carnegie's great book; "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" has sold tens of millions of copies over the past century.

What does it all mean? What does it say about worry and stress?

The act of choosing to create is an empowering act. It is a stark reminder that you are alive and you are not merely a reflection of external circumstances. You can choose to create whether your are strong or weak, rich or poor, healthy or ill. You can choose to create without knowing how to reach your goal or even knowing if your goal is reasonable or reachable.

Making a choice moves you from the dependent or reactive world into the independent or responsive world. In his book, "Man's Search for Meaning", Viktor Frankl speaks eloquently of the difference between a reaction and a response. While he had no control of his environment or the circumstances he encountered by choosing his response to each situation he could affirm his humanity and values. For both punishment and to force compliance the inmates at Auschwitz were periodically lined and counted off. The unlucky in these forced counts were either abused or executed as a lesson for all. Dr. Frankl never used his connections to escape a count-off as he truly believed that none of the prisoners deserved the treatment nor was his life any more valuable than his fellow prisoners. He found peace in accepting his circumstances and choosing an honorable path based upon his own values.

When you choose your response, your actions become the expression of your values, your intelligence, your passion and your creativity. Often, the only difference between a response and a reaction is a brief hesitation but sometimes a the proper response requires much reflection and some soul searching.

As we move from a response to a situation to your response to living a meaningful and good life in this world, we peel another layer deeper into this same onion. A fundamental choice to create or to take a creative and independent stance creates its own supporting structure. Robert Fritz in his book, The Path of Least Resistance uses the analogy of a rubber band to discuss the structural tension formed by the choice to create.

When one fails to choose to create, the stresses and worries of the world exist but lack direction like a loose rubber band. When one chooses to create a desired future result, a structure begins to form along the lines of difference between current reality and the future result. It is as if the rubber band begins to be stretched between your two thumbs. Clarity about the desired results and honesty about current reality support a clear structure and add tension around this structure.

A creative life is a full life in a world of uncertainty. Yet, by choosing to create, we have empowered ourselves to be both more independent and responsive to the world. The structure induced by our choices, our vision and our honesty actually support us by focusing our actions.