Our common primal instinct is fear.
Fear alerts us to danger. We do whatever it takes to alleviate danger. I call this the will to survive.
However, fear diminishes when the desire to create appears. Creativity and fear are the same pocket of cloth turned inside out.
Creativity is the transformation of fear into art, music, singing, dancing, acting, searching, discovering, writing and building.
A couple of years ago I visited Lascaux, France to see the nearly twenty thousand year old cave paintings. As I saw the images, I was so stunned, I didn’t believe they were real. “The dating is wrong,” I said, “no way this stuff is twenty thousand years old. It’s like Picasso did it. It’s too beautiful, too clear, too excellent.”
I was set back. To what I’m not sure. But if there was any possibility the images were authentic, I may have been set back to a moment of humility and awe.
The party I was with, and the guide who took us through the caves, convinced me that this was no fraud. I had never been so struck by the perfection of color and the sensation of animals in motion. When overwhelmingly beautiful images like those in the cave are created, fear vanishes.
The wonder of it all is that humans have been vanquishing fear and inspiring hope for thousands and thousands and THOUSANDS of years.
Fear balanced out by creativity produces hope, which produces joy.
A sense of joy has settled over me this holiday season. It is caused by what it has always been caused by: wonderful creativity expressed in song, music, and the celebration of our long and successful history on this tiny little planet in the vast universe.
My sincerest greetings.