Ben Greenfield delivers a short spoken monologue exploring the difference between creating and escaping. He challenges the stereotype that creative people are merely escaping their problems, encourages people (including pragmatic, left-brain workers) to make time for daily creative acts, and repeatedly asks the listener "Am I creating or am I escaping?" as a prompt to prioritize intentional creation over avoidance.
Let's talk about creating versus escaping society, which is us, I suppose, often tends to associate the creatives amongst us, the poets, the artists, the musicians as troubled souls who are delving into the depths of creativity to release internal angst or to escape from the real world. They're the ones who eventually become schizophrenic, bipolar, washed up, weird old cat, ladies and gentlemen. And honestly, that's sometimes true. It can be easy to run from your grown up problematic adult problems by picking up a guitar or plunking on a piano, or splashing paint wildly on a canvas, or writing poetry or fiction, and engaging in any other right brain creative effort that offers to distract you from the left brain problem you might be procrastinating to fix or escaping from. Yet this stereotype often keeps people who are left brain logical, rational, problem solving business, like productive members of society from embracing every human being's innate desire. Built in Desire to create that's something I have to repeatedly tell myself. It's okay to stop furiously working and take a break at a weird hour like 11am So I can randomly go play a song on the guitar. It's okay to step away from the email inbox that slowly eats you alive no matter how many times you get to zero inbox so that you you can instead go dip a paintbrush into watercolor and make something beautiful. It's okay to pause writing a business plan on a word processor and instead grab a dog eared journal to go outside and write something about, I don't know, the dandelions popping up in your backyard. Sure, creation can serve as escapism, but so can productive and noble and laudable work. You gotta ask yourself, am I creating or am I escaping? Am I creating or am I escaping? Am I creating or am I escaping? Now I'm telling you this while I'm probably supposed to be at work, but I'm not escaping that project. I'm just taking a break to create something different. This video. Once you discover how to blend these elements of creative creation every day life becomes far more fanciful and magical and even more childlike in a good way. So ask yourself, are you creating or are you escaping with what you get up to today? And be sure to make beauty every day. Thanks for watching.
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