Monthly Archives: January 2016

Creativity for me has turned so many meanings and purposes that I wonder if a courageous sense of open goodness is where I am riding in. Creativity isn’t about something new; often it is about something ancient that we have forgotten. Creativity isn’t actually about the future either, because the future emerges from what we do today. Creativity is perhaps about how we live the now – are we alive, hopeful and fruitful or are we negative, bitter and destructive?

So perhaps creativity is about reconciliation and peace. For if we are not adaptable, we would be stuck in our past – our pains and even our triumphs, and in a projectile of a future that is necessarily limited. And we would be stuck within ourselves, and there would no longer be any need for imaginings that are even beyond our existing limitations and longings.

So inherent in creativity is about the ability to forgive, to let go, to renew, and to commit to the constant re-examination and re-building that is unquestionably called to bring forth the vision – that can be seen only always in the horizon. Because to define it, is to limit it. And so, creativity becomes a choice: to always remain open and faithful – to the eventual actualisation of the greater good.

Creativity becomes a dogged determination and commitment to liberty for all.

Creativity is very much about striving. It is a refusal to remain defeated. Creativity is striving to live and witness a humanity far more kinder, gentler, more peaceful, more gracious than we can imagine we can ever be. And returning to a primordiality that is at once simple, and absolutely complex in its diverse expressions, and coordination.

It is less about the how but more about the harmony and music of life – our uniqueness, our diversity, our openness. And the mystery of our collective beauty.

It is singing and dancing the song of life, and our parts and duties in this song. In the final analysis, perhaps the song is always silent, because, it is always and necessarily – open, infinite and inarticulable.

This song, though silence, is vibrant, filled with life and always ready – to burst forth the next phrase of the living joy of simply being – alive.

Creativity is honouring the created and holding the uncreated with joyful expectancy.

Creativity is about embracing one another.

 

 

I have been examining this for longer than I am even aware. I used to think leadership is about capabilities. Then I thought leadership is about directing. And then I thought leadership is about empathy, care and giving. Then I found out leadership is about empowerment, enablement and nurturing. Suddenly, I get all excited, and I jumbled into leadership tons of creative energy and spontaneous freedom, and my daughter, often, truly astutely, would exclaim – “That’s a jumbly mess!” (after Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss). And we would collapse in laughter at our own silliness and creative discoveries. Leadership became for me about discoveries and joy.

I am now facing this very interesting space. That leadership is about courage.

It is about standing in a space where no one can even begin to recognise what you are just beginning to glimpse, where not even a vision is yet articulable, but that you know that it is the only direction worth facing. And that you are already taking a step towards that destiny. Regardless, in spite of, amidst, everything articulable and inarticulable.

You continue to walk tall and securely. One step at a time, without a map, because it is no longer a space where a map exists anymore (no one can tell you what to do in this space), just an inner compass. An intuition, that is unchanging. Towards uniqueness, towards unity of heart, towards peace and reconciliation, towards freedom, towards – courage.

And you are no longer afraid to do what is simply right.

And you find in that heart of courage: responsible action.

And that it is as silent as it is active. And that it is as personal as it is universal.

And doubt disappears and only belief remains.

That our human lives are about doing good and our common destiny is love.