I spent part of the weekend in the presence of a 16 month-old, who as well as being a master of nose-scrunches, roars, and pointing, also managed the deft kidnap of a breadstick box. The said breadsticks were promptly tipped onto the grass and stomped upon with a great amount of glee.
This toddler feat of sensory delight is one that I would struggle to execute with same the level of self-assurance and lack of inhibition. This is because unfortunately, along with many other adults, I find my understanding of the purpose and function of the humble breadstick overly constrained to that of eating.
Fellow sufferers of breadstick singularity may be familiar with the following symptoms: an overdeveloped awareness of ‘the right way to do something’, feelings of self-consciousness, a stifled curiosity, and – most tellingly of all – a generalised fear and resistance when undertaking a creative process.
If you would like to discover whether or not you share in this condition, simply suppose that in 5 minutes time someone is going to ask you to tell them a story you’re about to make up in this very moment. Check yourself for feelings of dread.
What cuts us off from the sort of creative and un-selfconsious thinking that identifies stomping breadsticks into the grass as a good (and cheap!) source of fun?
On one level, I am sure that it is just the sort of pattern-recognition that enables us to take decision-making shortcuts and live as adults. But I also think that beyond this, we start to allow these pre-determinations to make us risk averse even to the point of becoming cut off from our creative selves. Our tolerance for the discomfort of otherness and the unknown is so low that we increasingly ward off the ways creativity leads us into clunky, awkward, and unexpected encounters with ourselves and the world around us.
Of course, the simultaneously devastating and exhilarating thing about creativity is that, like its cousins spirituality and play, it forces us to meet ourselves again. Creativity taps into the fire/aliveness/spirit within us. As such, in the most tragic instances, a decision not to engage in creativity is how it can be that a person can live a whole life without ever meeting the person living that life.
Overcoming breadstick singularity
I’ve come on a bit of journey with creativity since understanding that my proximity to burnout is strongly correlated with the frequency and quality of my ability to be creative. I’ve learned to value it, and found that if I’m feeling stuck or feeling bad about the day, that it helps to work out something I can create – whether that’s something I cook, a letter I write, or a simple collage. Having something to point to at the end of the day, that I have helped bring into being, makes things feel better.
I still (nearly always) find myself feeling resistance to being creative, especially when I’m most unsure about whether I’ll reach the outcome that I want. Often being creative means surrendering to quantifying just how rubbish I am at something, and experiencing the unpleasant feelings of being blocked and stuck along the way.
When I feel that resistance I’m trying to remind myself that creativity isn’t just about what is created at the end. Being creative means occupying a flow state, means practicing being more open to the world, and means being nudged towards the surrender to what is beyond us (all features which connect creativity with spirituality).
This is part of the reason this blog is still going; writing has become an important creative practice for me. When I stop writing for a period of time, I become more vigilant about my well-being and try to be deliberate about giving myself more space. While often I write because I have a particular idea that I want to give myself time to explore and really commit to, if I haven’t written anything for a few weeks, I put it on my to-do list and take the time to write as a discipline. This post, in fact, is in that latter category. Because writing is about the process, I don’t mind knowing that what I have written hasn’t been perfected (or indeed, sometimes, proof-read…!) This blog simply captures particular thought processes as they happen in time, ones that I can always return to refine in future if I feel there’s more places I want to take something to.
So what lesson should you take with you having read about trampled breadsticks?
You decide. The serious part to all this is a plea to think about the role of creativity in your own life, and to examine what makes it hard for you to be creative – because it’s likely that whatever makes this hard also stops you being your fullest self in other areas of your life. Taking a step forwards in practicing your creativity to overcome this, will take you a step forward in other areas of life too. The silly part of this is just to present you with the fond mental image of a toddler stamping on breadsticks, and the memory of I have Faith and Marin spending a full 20 minutes balancing leaves on their noses using suncream in place of glue a couple of weeks ago. You can decide what speaks to you most.
thejoyofrachel 