The Act of Creation

I believe that anything in life, if placed in the proper context, can become a life lesson. After about four and a half hours of organizing my computer, I decided to take a break and look for desktop wallpapers to go with my, now, sparkling clean and organized computer space. As I’m making my way through the Google Image Search, I come upon a YouTube video of an artist creating a picture of Arwen and Aragorn.

It was an enlightening experience watching this video. Most people, including myself, take for granted the things that exist. Things are just automagically there when we want/need them. We fail to appreciate the time and effort it takes to “materialize” these things.

Everything begins with a thought. This artist had a thought, “I would like to create a picture of Aragorn and Arwen” and then proceeded to manifest a physical representation of that thought using the tools he had at his disposal. The video is set at a speed that compacts the time it took into a four minute video but I’m fairly certain it took a heck of a lot longer than that to create the digital picture.

When we have a thought it takes take time and effort to bring that thought into reality. Maybe the thought we have is to lose weight or start a business or clean up our computer. Between the first thought and the final product lies the act of creation. This is the process where we make our plans, acquire the tools we need and do the work that needs to be done.

Some people, such as myself, agonize over the fact that the process seems to take a long time. The fact that the process takes a long time is usually due to a lack of experience. The artist, JT Blevins-Singed Tentacles, is obviously well versed in digital artistry and knows how to use his tools. Thus this didn’t take him as long as it would for someone just starting out. It would probably take a novice months to recreate this artwork because they would need to learn the skills involved and the technology they are using. As their experience and knowledge grew, it wouldn’t take them as long to create other advanced artworks.

Similarly, if you try to lose weight and you have never done it before, it may take you a long time to manifest a thinner you. This is because, invariably, you’ll end up doing something wrong just because you didn’t know any better. You may go on a crash diet and lose the weight and scoff at the “expert advice” while on your shopping spree. But because you didn’t learn the proper way to eat for your body, you end up, three months later, giving away those new clothes to the Goodwill because you’ve put the weight back on. Maybe after that you decide to read some book on losing weight and take up walking around your neighborhood. As your knowledge and experience grows, so does your understanding of how weight loss works and finally you hit upon the magic formula that allows you to lose the weight and keep it off.

So the life lesson here is that the length of time the act of creation takes is equal to a complex mathematical formula involving the variables of your knowledge, experience and commitment to the goal. The main thought to take away from this is that while achieving the goal is great, it is the process towards that goal achievement that does us the most good. Take your time and enjoy.

Thank the editor. Buy me a coffee!

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