We are all creative

One of my latest finished objects: a second sunbonnet but in 0-3mo size.

"You must be very creative.", commented a playgroup mum this week while she was admiring Miss L's bonnet. This led to a conversation about making and crafting and creativity.

I told this mum that when I was little I never thought of myself as creative because I was a typical Asian nerd who just studied and my hobby would have been watching TV. Though my mum taught me to knit when I was about 10 years old all I ever managed to learn and all she had time to teach me was to knit garter stitch scarfs. With lack of motivation and no nice yarn to play with I lost interest in knitting after my first scarf was finished.

I remember when I was little I wasn't into craft and I didn't do much drawing in my spare time. Later at high school Art was the only subject that I got bad grades in. When my mum saw my report card and asked about the poor grade I told her, "I can't draw for crap."  End of story. I stopped trying to be creative after that.

During my teaching degree I ended up in this "Art" stream for one of the prerequisite subjects that I don't even recall the name of. The class was given a project to create an piece of work that would be displayed as a sort of exhibition at the end of the semester. The piece could be any medium and was to respond to the concept of 'assessment and reporting' in the Education world. I was distraught about being placed in this class and I was freaking out about having to make something for this exhibition. However, the teacher gave us this inspiring speech saying, "Everyone can create and it's just a matter of finding your own area of creativity."

After this conversation at playgroup I was thinking back to that teacher's comment and I realised that she was right in the end. Everyone does have the skills to create and each will create in their own way. I grew up putting creativity into the box with artistic talent and my journey has shown me that I was so wrong.

I believe in a creator God and I believe I was made in His image. As His creation I think I can share in His desire to create and God has also blessed us with His beautiful world to inspire us. Creating should be a natural desire in every human being and we do it every day without even knowing it. We create meals for ourselves and our family, we create memories with our time and we create and nurture little people and help them to be little creators too through our hugs and words of encouragement. 

So, I guess in the end I can admit that I am creative. I enjoy expressing it through knitting and that is one of the ways I am consciously creating. However, I now realise our lives are imbued with creativity and it's time for me to accept it and take joy in it.