After a summer of exploring, sharing, and *hopefully* inspiring creativity, I realized we never defined creativity. Turns out that’s no small task – many a doctoral candidate has earned their PhD with a dissertation attempting to define it.
So I decided to go back the the basics and look up the definition in the dictionary. Here it is:
cre·a·tiv·i·ty
ˌkrēāˈtivədē/
noun
1. the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.
Not bad, but a bit narrow (is all creativity artistic???) for my liking. So I looked to the thesaurus and got the following synonyms:
cleverness
genius
imagination
imaginitaveness
ingenuity
inspiration
inventiveness
originality
resourcefullness
talent
vision
Great vocabulary words to substitute should the opportunity arise, but now I’ve gone too broad. Back to my original question: what is creativity?
Turns out I was asking the wrong question. When I went back to the thesaurus I found only one antonym listed:
reality
Mind blown.
By defining what creativity is not, I found the best definition I’ve ever encountered of what it is:
Making the unreal, real.
It’s creating supernatural from natural; extraordinary from ordinary; possible from impossible. It’s landing on the moon. It’s calming a screaming child. It’s inventing the lightbulb. It’s discovering a new route to the grocery store.
It’s all of the above just so long as…
It’s not reality.
#CreativeSummer15
Day 90/93
