“Anyone whose goal is ‘something higher’ must expect someday to suffer vertigo.  What is vertigo?  Fear of falling?  No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling.  It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”
~Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Today I was helping a friend write a job description, and I encountered the term “measurable.”  It was something her organization was asking for, and while I understood the term and intent, I’m not sure that’s the real answer.

Success isn’t about whether you can have “measurable,” it’s about whether you’re accomplishing anything.  I always substitute the term “goal” for measurable and it changes everything.

A measurable is something you can measure, a goal is something you’ve accomplished.  Too often “measurable” is measuring activity, and not accomplishment.  It doesn’t matter if you can supply a score to a basketball game without a hoop, it matters whether you score enough points to win.

That’s what goals are about, not measuring activity but measuring accomplishment.

“But there’s a difference between having artistic interests and being psychotic.  That’s more than a fine line of differentiation, and I do see that a bit too much.”
~Crispin Glover

I hear so much about creativity, and I see so little of it.

The world seems to be divided into four groups:

1. Those who think they’re creative and really aren’t.
2. Those who really are creative.
3. Those who think they’re not creative.

You can see my point, perhaps.  I believe God blessed everyone with the ability to be creative in some way, and I think many of the people who think they’re creative really aren’t.  They may be good synthesizers, or good connectors, but they don’t really create.  But if you challenge them on it you’ll be surprised at the vehemence of response!

This is the kind of thing you really only admit to yourself in the dark of night when no one else is around.

My experience is that the people who go psycho aren’t the truly creative, but those who think they are but really aren’t.  They’ll go to any length to build an argument about how their creativity is the reason an organization is successful.  They take one crayon from the box and deem that this color is creativity and everything else isn’t.  They’ll pound their square version of creativity into the round hole whatever it takes.  And some of us believe it.

But they’re not the people I really want us to think about.  I’m more interested in the people who think they’re not creative because they don’t understand the universal law.  Everyone is creative in their own area in their own way.  Your color is in the crayon box if you’ll just look for it!

I’ve seen a lot of people who misinterpret what creativity is, and continue to believe they’re not, and because that’s their belief they become what they think.  They can’t be creative because everyone has always told them they weren’t, or held them back from playing around, or simply reinforced their belief system.

You, my friend, are creative.  I don’t know in what way, and I don’t know how, but you are.  God has blessed us all with creativity, not just a chosen few.  If you don’t give up on it, you’ll find your creativity when the opportunity comes along.  As long as you haven’t shut that door.