In the mainstream, Western, materialist paradigm, people tend to think our creative ideas are something we author on our own. They want to take credit. They, for example, speak of “songwriting.”
In contrast, in modern wellness and healing cultures, people tend to think our ideas come from the universe or source. Our creative ideas are something that happen to us. They deflect credit. They speak of “songcatching.”
For me, the truest answer lies somewhere in the middle.
We can never claim full credit for any act of creativity and ingenuity. First, we are always indebted to and building on what came before us. And we are always reflecting or responding to what is happening around us. These ideas never arise in a vacuum.
Second, in a very real way, creativity is indeed so often simply an act of listening to and “catching” ideas that arise in our minds. As Bob Dylan once expressed about his songwriting: “I don’t even consider that I wrote it when I got done. The song was there before me, before I came along. I just sort of came down and sort of took it down with a pencil, that it was all there before I came around.”
Gratitude and wonder for where our ideas came from seems healthy and appropriate. So much of it is a mystery.
But just the same, we must give ourselves our due for our ideas and creations. Deflecting credit in the vein of Bob Dylan obscures all the work we must do to prepare ourselves to receive these transmissions. It ignores all the work we must do, sculpting, nurturing, and packaging an idea after we “catch” it.
And these ideas don’t just arise in just anyone at random. They are each an expression of our unique essence that only we can bring to life. Our songs, poems, creative business ideas, etc. could only ever have come through us.
No creation is ever pure emergence or pure design. Acts of genius require both fertile ground and someone planting and tending to a seed.
