Creativity is Exciting

We are all creative in some way. Housewives create ways to make their work easier, whether it is folding clothes or cooking. I find myself being creative in making my life easier now that my hands don’t work as well as they once did, and it is harder to climb stairs. Where once I could bound up and down steps with or without something in my arms, I now keep a basket at the head of the stairs. When I find something needs to go down, I put it in the basket. On my next trip down, I’ll hook the handle of the basket over one arm and go down while keeping one hand on the banister.

Creative cooking comes to me naturally as that was the way my mother cooked. She created her own recipes and dishes she made for her family. She read the daily newspapers and took note of ideas from columns by professionals. She found ways to use those ideas to make our lives better. I never knew anyone who was as creative as she when she had to stretch what was on hand to feed six people.

Fairmont Hotels have become creative in finding ways to sustain bees by having beekeepers set up hives on the hotel roof tops in big cities. What an ingenious way to save our bees and to provide honey for the hotel dining rooms and even their bars. For a number of years we have been warned that honey bees were going to become extinct. They are essential to our livelihood. Creative minds can find answers to most problems if given the opportunity or when given a challenge.

Wasted Creativity

What makes me sad is the waste of creative minds when they are turned to dishonest and criminal behavior. Every day we hear of people who create ways to steal our identities, to steal money and cause havoc with society. We have seen movies where crooks scheme and use their creativity to rob jewelry stores, hijack planes, and bring horrible disaster down on the world.

If only this creativity were used to bring about a better world. If those who use their minds to cause harm would turn that same effort to find a cure for diseases that kill our children and ruin our lives, to bring good into the world, to help rather than to hurt. I think children with limited education often  turn their creativity toward harmful pursuits. Better education and mentoring could turn the tide for them and  for us. 

Today I heard that some of the top people in Silicon Valley are thinking of putting their keen creative abilities to search for other beings out there in space. They are thought of as the top minds that solve problems in today’s world. Look what they have done in just a few years. I have no doubt they could find any alien beings if there are any.

Meanwhile, we ordinary folk go on day after day using our creative minds to write, to build, to repair, to expand, to invent, to make better, to care for, to protect, to teach, to make safe, and on and on. When I hear someone say to me, I’m not creative at all, I remind them they create when they make a sandwich. How many ways can we make a sandwich. Do we use lettuce? What kind? What condiments? Do we use cheese or something else?

My brothers. Rex Council is second from right.

I remind them they use their creativeness when they find a better way to do something in their work or at home. My brother, Rex, never went to college, but he invented a  number of products used on our farm and later at Hercules Bumpers, our family manufacturing plant. He was a  natural engineer, I think, and amazed us all with his ability to see ways to solve problems.

Do you think of yourself as creative?