A Decision To Make
From a life time of deep introspection, I have ascertained that we are all made to create. I grew up creating with my best friend, Gabe. We thought, we wondered and we imagined, and the world was more than a canvas; it was a piece of our minds. Everything in creation was inspiring to our young brains, and we could remake what existed to fit our imaginations. A couple boxes could be the console to our spaceship. We chanted, shirtless, in the rain while raising sticks. With an old kangaroo costume, bungee cords, and a fold-up-chair, we entertained ourselves for hours. He and I taught each other to be inventive.
Sadly, as I aged, I discovered that people don't want to use their brains for more than a hat rack. I meander through school five days a week with a sense, a feeling of being awed by all the wonderful people I see. From the look of it, no one else can relate. Their minds are beautiful, but they refuse to let their thought run free of societal, religious, limitations. We all are taught to keep our minds in a box. All of us have our tracks, and we ride the mediocre rails all day. I admit, letting your mind question the things you see and create from what is perceived isn't easy, and it can be painful and it gets confusing, but I think the trek is precious. I wouldn't dumb myself down and numb myself up simply to live a, what I consider, meaningless life that's spiritually comfortable. The thought that what you believe could be wrong is enough disturbance for some people to stop desiring to live. This is an ode to those who endure and ponder. This is, what I have come to know as, the truth; we all ought to use our minds. Alt-J, a British alternative band, has a song called "Hunger of the Pine" with opening lyrics that would really help articulate this concept I'm urging:
"Sleeplessly embracing
Butterflies and needles
Line my seamed-up join
Encased in case I need it
In my stomach, for my heart
Chain mail."
The song isn't actually about a pine tree; it’s about the verb pine, a synonym to yearn. A translation of the title would be "Internal, Natural Ache of Desire." Although the song is about unrequited love, its lyrics can be related to our topic. "Sleeplessly embracing" expresses the moments in which you lie awake at night, sleepless because of some great burden, and are forced to accept what is coming towards you. It's what Jesus was doing in the garden before the cross while all his disciples slept. "Butterflies and needles" completes the thought in the line prior by saying that you sleeplessly embrace your excitements that keep you awake (butterflies) and anxieties which agitate you (pins and needles). "Line my seamed-up join" is the end to a thought begun by the word "needles" in the line above. If you put them together it's "needles line my seamed-up join," which is basically saying there is a tear that is in the process of healing. The singer is being stitched back with needles, and his flesh is joining again, but for now, he is torn. This verse sets the song up for my three favorite lines, "Encased in case I need it" being the first of the three. This lyric means "it" is covered, cloaked, sheltered because the owner may need to use it again. "In my stomach, for my heart" is another one of those junction lines that finishes and begins two different thoughts. In this line, we find that "it" is his heart and that it's finding a place of rest in his stomach. When someone's heart "sinks to his stomach," that means his spirits are low because of some tragedy; the band is making the point that his heart must rest in depression for a while to recover so it can be useful once more. "Chainmail" is the final lyric in this trio of verses that I adore. This last word completes the thought of encasement.
The relation of these verses to the idea I'm proposing, that we should use our minds by thinking and imagining, that we shouldn't just take the ideas given to us but should test them, that we should perceive the world around us and make something of it with the power of our thoughts, is this: we all hunger to create. It fulfills our purpose as people.
"Then God said, 'Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness,'"
"Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."
If a loving creator makes something to be like him, what do you think its main traits will be? Love and creativity. The song goes on to confess the pain of pursuing the thing he craves.
Here's where the song and our topic differ: it's not the pursuit of creativity and thought and usage of the mind that are painful, it's the reality we wake ourselves to. When you start to perceive your world, you start to perceive its problems. When you think about who you are, when you soul search, you find yourself to be evil in nature. Thought, however, can be sacrificial. Imagination, however, can be loving. The world you stumble upon when you access that hunk of gray-matter in your skull is one governed by God. The world won't always appreciate creativity and the ideas you have made. That God is love. That God is able to adjust what goes wrong. That God is who you find, you ought to let into your mind. That God has fixed it, and hasn't stopped fixing it. That is the power of thought. Of the mind. Of creativity.
Two guys I know of, one fictional and the other real, are the epitome of people who have decided to Create and Think. Walter Mitty, the fictional one, is a character whose imagination was larger than life, literally. Every mundane thing became exciting to him because he could make it more than its face value, which is what love does. He was, however, ostracized because of his mind and declared insane by his peers. There is no guarantee that the life you'll live if you create is safe, but it is surely worth it. You only have to give it an opportunity and never stop opting to create. Tyler Joseph, the nonfictional one, is the lead singer, pianist, and songwriter for the band, Twenty One Pilots. Whether you like their music or not, the truth in what Tyler says still stands:
"You can be depressed and still have joy. You can be suicidal and still have joy. We all stop thinking and we all stop talking and we all stop sharing and we all stop creating, because by doing any of these things we quickly find out just how unhappy we are. But that’s okay. That’s normal. Don’t let the fear of unhappiness cripple your pursuit of finding what it is you believe. Since joy is found in belief, we all have to push through unhappiness to find joy."
He is a huge inspiration to me. He didn't plant the idea of this paper in my life and head, but he has always been someone to reinforce it. He didn't inspire my belief that anyone and everyone can and should create, but he always reminds me of it.
My consistent belief of craftsmanship is that it breaks the laws of science. A first container has two gallons of milk in it. If you pour one gallon of the milk into a second container, then the first container still has one gallon of milk remaining. This is not how creating works. We put a piece of ourselves into everything we make. It's our breath-of-life. But when we make, we aren't emptying from who we are, we're adding to another thing, giving it greater value. Every thought you think, which is entirely you, is not detracting from you, but lets you and others know more deeply who you are. All the things you make become a part of you. Think about it, and I know you'll understand it soon enough.
Stay tuned to read my next two articles (which I promise will be shorter than this one) that'll be all about how our thoughts and creativity relate to God.
Sources: http://genius.com/Alt-j-hunger-of-the-pine-lyrics
http://genius.com/Twenty-one-pilots-lane-boy-lyrics
Photo by: Noah S. (Grade 10)
