Your creativity is dangerous in the best possible way

What if you took your art very, very seriously?

From the time we’re very small, we absorb important lessons about what is serious — those things that are worthy of our time, energy, and effort, the things that matter — and what is frivolous.

Some things I was taught to take very, very seriously:

• Getting good grades

• Studying math and science

• Finding a stable job that pays well

• Following the rules

• Striving to become thin

Some things I was taught were frivolous:

• Art and theater classes

• Wanting to be an author

• My college major

• Dreams and aspirations that didn’t follow an established path

• Progressive values

I think many of us were taught similar things — that our creative yearnings, the most tender and authentic and real and vulnerable and beautiful parts of us, are frivolous. That they deserve only the leftovers of our time and energy. Only after we’ve finished our math homework, worked our nine hours, folded the laundry, paid the bills, cooked dinner, put the kids to bed — then, and only then, have we earned the privilege of working on our art. Because it’s frivolous, extra, not part of the real work of living a life. A thing that doesn’t matter.

I disagree. Creativity isn’t frivolous. It’s dangerous, in the best possible way. Creativity disrupts. It questions. It deconstructs what is and imagines what might be different.

Why else would our most powerful institutions — those who enrich themselves with a status quo that doesn’t work so well for most everyone else — try so hard to quash, minimize, and delegitimize creativity? To teach us that it doesn’t matter?

Today, I invite you to question everything you were taught.

What would change if you took your creativity seriously? If you fully embraced its power? If you dared, even, to believe it could be dangerous, in the best possible way?

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