A Flashback

Why creativity? In short, because it is a capacity that we do not give much attention since we are little and we are not aware of its positive power in our lives.

My interest in Creativity began several years ago when I took a class at the university called: The Little Prince Seminar. In this class we would read and analyse each chapter of this book, which happens to be my favourite. Its author, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, perfectly portrays the meaning of life in the character of The Little Prince. This little man is always complaining of how adults worry too much about getting the perfect job, learning more and being successful in life and they miss the most important things as friendship, being surprised by beautiful and small things and playing. The Little Prince will remind the Pilot the importance of not losing the child that is in him, who allows him to imagine, to foster true relationships and to create.

Through this book I started to reflect on how I was living my life at that time and I noticed that I had become very serious, trying to achieve a successful career, which was not bad, but because of many worries in my life I forgot to play, to laugh, and do many creative things that I used to do before. In short, I just forgot to become more like a child, enjoy the simplest and most beautiful things in life and let myself dream of what I could do with them. I started to look around me, and to my surprise, I found successful grown-up adults who didn’t play anymore. In each meeting they would gather together to talk about politics, businesses, soccer, parties, etc. When I came up with an idea to play anything, their answer was: ¨that is boring! Let’s talk about serious stuff¨.

As The Little Prince, I felt frustrated and sad because it seemed like a rule one had to follow: ¨As you grow up, you forget about becoming a child¨. Again, following The Little Prince, I took this problem very seriously because that inner child lives inside us and is longing to express himself to make us happier and fulfilled (Bradshaw, 1999). Anyone can tell me that when we let ourselves laugh, play and create like children, we have so much fun! So, I decided to help myself and other adults to be more conscious about this problem. Every time I could, I would talk to my friends about The Little Prince and the importance of recalling that innocence and creativity in our lives. A few times, I made copies of the book and highlighted the important parts of it and gave it to some friends. However, people didn’t think it was important and every time that I spoke about this subject, they would change it.

So, I wanted to research more around creativity and our capacity to play and little by little I have found more resources. I decided to start this blog to share my personal reflections about these topics and invite people to discuss about it, especially teachers who can do so much to foster creativity in their students and positively influence in their future as professionals and human beings.

References:  

-          De Saint Exupéry, A. (2000). The Little Prince. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc.

-          Bradshaw, J. (1990). Homecoming: Reclaiming And Championing Your Inner Child. New York: Bantam Books.