Letter to Creative Self
Dear the creative Lauren,
Life has pretty been chaotic since I last saw you. I still imagine you as a little girl with messy blonde hair and bare feet, who spent those long summer days in her own world. Her world was full of creating, whether it was art, songs, plays, or dances and she did it just for herself. Life became busy and your perception of creating was no longer pleasurable, but rather a waste of valuable time.
But creativity never really left you, did it? You quickly found writing as an escape from your own mind. Your journal became a way for you to feel heard, it became a friend and an outlet in which you could dump all of the noise inside your head. It allowed you to put together concepts and make difficult emotions into something beautiful. Over the last few years, it seems you have lost that love to create again. I know life has become even more busy and time feels even shorter.
As you have grown up, your perception focused more on what other people thought about you, rather than what you thought. You became paralyzed by the idea of originality because that leaves room for judgment. You hated the thought of rejection. You feared that your idea of yourself of never being good enough would be once again confirmed by an outside source. I know life has been hard since you were that little girl and the ignorant bliss of vulnerability was taken from you, but you deserve more. You deserve to live your own life, whatever that may be.
As Rilke wrote, “You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of our heart.”
Your creative journey isn’t about the result or the product, but rather the person you become while creating. Your time spent finding this part of you will lead to much greater things than I think you or I can expect.
Learning how to create means learning how to slow down. Learning how to create means finding that part of you that has been covered by societal standards and fear of rejection. Learning to create means making beautiful ideas from our difficulties and struggles. So when it feels like you are wasting your time, I want to assure you that you aren’t.
As Rilke wrote, “be patient toward all this is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers.” Be open to making mistakes and learning from them. Be open to not knowing the answer, but creating one.
Find that little girl with the messy blonde hair and the bare feet that is still somewhere inside you. Embody her power to create without fear, to play without purpose, to be passionately authentic. I am so proud of you for taking the first step.
With love, Lauren
