Creativity is the ability to bring imagination to reality!

More than just defining the relation between creativity and our activities, this article also touches upon the reason for the existence of creativity and its role in the bigger picture. This is a gist of the huge topic that will be covered in future related posts.

Let us start from the very basics:

As beings with life, we start gaining knowledge and experience through interaction / connecting with our environment (ecosystem). In doing so, we feel our surroundings through our natural sensors and develop instinctive reactions. These feelings generate our first sets of emotions and instincts. As one of those instinctive evolutions, we developed the curiosity to understand. So, initially we try to understand our surroundings through our feelings / sensations. In time, as we observe, accumulate and simulate these sensations, we get accustomed to these feelings  / sensations. Through retrospect we start to understand them. This understanding helps us to evolve and understand more enabling us to arrive at our own concepts of reality.  In effect we develop thought patterns that influence habits. Further, we share our thoughts in different ways back to the environment (the environment that we perceived through our preliminary feelings) - Meaning we express. 


Expression is a milestone in our evolution. This enables us to share our thoughts and feelings with others in a way that they understand them and sync with us (with their own perception) to evolve the thoughts further. In essence, taking the next step towards maturity.


This collaborative thought pattern evolution with the ecosystem is effective in revising some of our preliminary instinctive emotions. We start feeling things a bit differently through the effect of our newly gained more mature perception. This seems to be an unending cycle. The interesting part is that, once we start to perceive the original baseline from different angles, our thoughts branch out.
This triggers more curiosity with a pinch of discomfort from the chaos due to incomplete understanding. Memories of our experience, feelings, thoughts and perception fuels our imagination. Imagination kicks in at a lot of instances. We put together the various thoughts and feelings to simulate them in our minds in-order to satisfy our own instincts and curiosity. Remember - Imagination is in our minds. Understand that the mind is a blend of our feelings and thoughts. For our mind to perceive things properly, our heart and our brain (our feelings and thoughts) must have a balance - must be in sync with each other.


Imagination enhances our ability of expression which evolves more philosophical thought patterns. Also, imagination of something for a long time brings an emotional attachment to it. This drives the need to  bring them to reality - either to realize one's dreams, or to share it with others, etc. - in essence catalysing the natural evolution of perception. 


Note that perception is merely the way we collate inputs through our sensing capability, thoughts and understanding. Our perception of things may or may not be true in reality. However, in time nature has its own way of bringing things closer to the truth. 


The Essence of Creativity
We seek different ways, use different tools and techniques to try and share our imagination with others / bring them to reality. The innovative ways that we adopt to express our imagination (may it be an art or a material) is through our creative ability.


For example, expressing a concept through artistic expression is an innovative way of conveying a message. The various tools and techniques used to innovate and bring the artistic expression to reality is together the essence of creativity.


The feelings, thoughts and their related emotions, expressions and imagination together help us to perceive "The What and Why" of our surroundings. However, in order to take it to the next level and avoid stagnation, evolution of perception is needed. This is possible by the unending cycle of thoughts and intuitive feelings influencing and reiterating each other with each step of evolution. The traits of innovation and creativity are essential for catalysing this evolution. The by-product also offers us a better life and satisfies our curiosity. Creativity is more about the "How" of the innovation which transcends existing limitations and leaves a legacy that fuels further evolution.


There is a thin transitional line between the "what, why" and the "how". This line is blurred out by imagination. The what and the why are elements of perception. How is the element of creativity and innovation. This how enhances our What and Why creating a cyclic process so as to unravel next levels of understanding and maturity.


A Myth Buster
Some people misunderstand that creative thinking / creative thoughts are creativity. Creative thoughts lead to creativity and is not creativity in and by itself. It can be analogized with strategy and strategic thinking. Strategic thinking is the way in which a strategy is developed. Strategic thinking is not strategy by itself. Similarly, creative thinking is the way to achieve creativity and is not creativity by itself.


The Bottom-line
The purpose of creativity is to enhance the perception of existence and life (What & Why) through transcending limitations (How) and catalysing evolution. The starting point may be many such as imagination, creative thinking - which should lead to creativity that has the potential to evolve existence to the next level of maturity."In essence, Creativity is yet another form of natural evolutionary trait (an ability) that fuels the transcendence of limitations and catalyses evolution. Limitations - most of which we set upon ourselves and others that are set by nature."