Our Soul’s Need for Creativity
Reflections on what is needed
@tutu_mora shared a post a while ago on Instagram that was originally created by @bykellymalka. The first slide of the post read, “An abundance of work does not define your creative worth”.
The following slides address the issue of creating art to share on social media. That the expectation to produce and share so frequently in order to grow and create a following is a media tactic, but not necessarily a great tactic to create quality art.
Admittedly, the slide that most hit me was on @bykellymaika’s original post where there is a slide that reads “When art turned into content my humanity turned into machinery”.
That struck me. Hard.
The year of 2020 was a very difficult year for basically everyone who is alive at that time. While I was meeting with clients every week to support them in dealing with their emotions around the uncertainty of the state of the world, I, like everyone else, was also struggling in my own way.
As I’ve heard many therapists say about 2020, “It’s not always common that I’m going through the exact same struggles that my clients are as I’m trying to help them.” Though, I think, the dual process of the therapist and client going through the same thing can be healing in its own way if the therapist is mindful, it still creates an added challenge. Particularly if it seemed that everything going on in one year is somehow “unprecedented”.
One of the things I did for myself throughout 2020 in order to both care for myself and help cope was take walks and hikes whenever I could. Nature provided some sense of peace and calm in an otherwise chaotic world.
The second thing I attempted to do was find music that spoke to the emotions I was feeling at the time. When I was a teen and early 20-something, I, like many others at that age, would use music as a way to help emotionally process what is happening.
However, my search for music that truly met me emotionally at that time was… missing.
This left me both puzzled and heartbroken.
Where has the music gone?
Sure, there were some songs about the pandemic.
But it felt as if these songs were missing… something. Something very important. Something that truly spoke to the soul of who we are. Something a little more personal about the inner struggles that so many of us were experiencing and continuing to experience.
Where is that? Where did it go?
I can’t help but feel like a part of it has to do with some of what @bykellymaika was talking about in her post. Perhaps it’s that the pressure to create content quickly and efficiently has led us to become more disconnected from what we’re truly feeling, from what we feel truly called to create or express, and from who we truly are on a deeper level rather than a material level.
I use the word “soul” in the title here, because it feels very fitting for this topic. I realize that in our modern world it has somehow become taboo to use the word “soul”, because the word “soul” is is thought to be “religious” and not considered “secular”.
In fact, I’ve literally turned down book offers because the publishing company did not want me to use that kind of language. However, I believe that this is more of a detriment than a benefit.
Realistically, the word soul hasn’t only been used in religions, but in various philosophical and mythological traditions as well. Additionally, for anyone who has studied psychology, you may also know that the Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung often used the word “soul” in his work.
In just one of his quotes, Carl Jung said, “Natural life is the nourishing soil of the soul. It is the body, the feeling, the instincts, which connect us with the soil.” You could almost say that, by acknowledging the soul, we’re also acknowledging ourselves as a part of nature rather than viewing ourselves as separate.
The English word soul comes from the latin word of anima, which means “a current of air, wind, air, breath, the vital principle, life, soul”, which, to me, reinforces how this word helps us to connect back to life itself.
If you look in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, you’ll see that there are three essential meanings for the word soul. These include:
the spiritual part of a person that is believed to give life to the body and in many religions is believed to live forever
a person’s deeply felt moral and emotional nature
the ability of a person to feel kindness and sympathy for others, to appreciate beauty and art, etc.
I don’t know about you, but when I read those my first thought is, “Well, that’s exactly what we’ve all desperately needed the last two years.” So many of us seem to be completely disconnected from those things at a time in humanity when we’re all confronted with many huge existential dilemmas in the midst of a global pandemic, economic uncertainty, and, overall, social upheaval.
So if there were ever a time in human history to avoid the use of the word “soul”, now definitely isn’t it.
This leads me to wonder…
What would help you slow down a little bit?
What needs to happen so you can allow yourself a little more space?
What can you do for you so you can allow yourself some time and space to simply ground, tune in, and allow yourself to express and/or process in the the way you feel called to?
Maybe that’s through journaling. Maybe that’s through some kind of art. Maybe that’s through writing poems or playing music. Maybe that’s by simply being in nature.
What will help you connect back to a part of you that you’ve been neglecting in order to accommodate to living in this modern world?