A creation is not “done”. It happens.

My personal story about finding “the flow”.

“Let creativity happen”, have I put as a “motto” in a recent post on social networks. On the other hand, I have been trying at any price to “create” a new article about creativity all day long without getting the creative “flow” to release.

I wanted to set the intention, even though it wasn’t flowing, so I set to it, computer on my lap, sitting on the sofa. Searching for a title. Searching for the words from my intellectual mind. I know the flow well and I know where it comes from when it really flows. However, in some way, I wanted to force the thing and, clumsily, drafted a paragraph, deleting sentences, reading what I had written, and feeling blocked. ‘You’re repeating yourself’, I said to myself, ‘this is a drag! It was getting late, and my eyes were falling asleep. What with one thing and another, I had been wasting time while waiting for a good idea to write. In the end, I decided to leave it, get up, brush my teeth and get ready for bed.

Moving — I mean, standing up and going upstairs — loosened the mental block I was in. Then it suddenly struck me: “Creation doesn’t happen. It happens.” — That’s it! This is going to be the title.

So many times experienced. When I was writing little theaters for the school where I worked, or when I sat down to write a poem, a song … these creations come out when I least expect them. There is a kind of inverse force to what we usually think, involved in the creative act: we believe, or let’s say, we were told, that things are achieved with effort. And it’s quite the opposite! Well, it’s not exactly the opposite, it’s not that easy to explain. The opposite of effort, we think, is the attitude of the lazy person who passes over everything and does nothing. But it is not laziness that we have to look for when we want to create. In fact, we don’t have to look for anything, but to listen. Change our perspective. It’s like when I climb the hill and, from up there, I contemplate the landscape. It’s when I go to the forest and listen to the birds. When I sit by the sea and let myself be inspired by the swaying of the waves and the sound of the sea. Passive, but attentive to whatever arises.

The mental tension is released from this passive-attentive attitude. It is released, I said, didn’t I? I did not say that it dissolves. Nor that the “problem”, whatever it may be, is solved. It is released. From this attentive passivity, it may happen that I start to cry about something that was lingering inside without being able to let it go. Or I may begin to breathe again, or I may see more clearly what could be the next move in my life, which sometimes seems like a game of chess.

Creating is an internal movement, similar to the flowing of the river. Once flowing, we can revise and tweak the creation that is born; correct the course of the wild river, and create a beautiful landscape. But before it begins to flow, it is not necessary to intervene, but to let go of control, dancing and walking, climbing the mountain, contemplating the sea, changing the air, broaden the horizon.

This is how creation or innovation can happen. It can. Or may not, it depends on the day, the moment. But if it doesn’t happen right now and I am willing to listen, it will happen later.