Everyday Canvas

Creativity and Fear

Prompt: Sources say that our brains are hard-wired to fear creativity, and vice versa, creativity thrives on what the brain fears most. What do you think? Can this be true for you?

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This may just the fear of the unknown. Creativity feeds on abstraction, and abstract concepts are difficult to accept, at least at first.

This may also be the clue to our resistance to alien ideas, thoughts, and belief systems. Those things are not comfortable to swallow as we usually fear what we don’t know or even what we don’t know enough of.

By birth, some individuals have a more creative personality than others. Still, creative imagination can be encouraged through the environment and hard work. I believe creativity works in two steps. The first step is the ability to think of a wide variety of concepts, connected in some way to the topic at hand. The second step has to do with intuition, which is a mystery in itself, and whatever you believe it is, it is an abstraction.

Consequently, the essence of these two steps produces a creative idea. That is why the advice to writers is to read a lot so they can at least come up with that first step.

Can that fearing the unknown thing be true for me? Sure. I dread being in the dark, not being able to see. Yet, I have no fear of death. That, too, is an unknown. Go figure!