Читать книгу Creative Synergy - Bunny Paine-Clemes - Страница 18

If we are prevented from exercising our full potential, we can feel depressed or even ill. Seligman and Peterson, who call creativity one of the basic human virtues, narrate this moving example (italics theirs):

At age 68, Elizabeth Layton was a retired homemaker and aging grandmother, living out her final years in a small prairie town in Kansas . . . There was really nothing outstanding about her except for one fact: she frequently suffered profound depression. Indeed, for more than three decades she had undergone all kinds of therapy, including drugs and electroshock. Nothing really helped, but she managed to persevere. And then disaster struck. Her youngest son died after a prolonged illness, plunging her into the darkest despair ever. On several occasions she contemplated suicide as the only exit from her seemingly insurmountable depression. Yet following up her sister’s wise suggestion, she enrolled in a drawing class. Elizabeth’s art teacher recognized her elderly student’s talent even before the course was completed. Elizabeth just loved to draw and draw and draw, creating one sketch after another with great facility and expressiveness. Besides allowing her to release pent-up feelings and beliefs—about death, sadness, AIDS, racism, nuclear war, American commercialism, and other personal and social issues—painting gave Elizabeth something to look forward to each day. She found her mission in life. Her works began to be displayed in art museums and galleries, first locally and then in a traveling exhibit that toured the nation. By the time she died in 1993, she had produced nearly a thousand drawings that made a deep impression on admirers all over the United States. To be sure, Elizabeth will not go down in history as a Michelangelo or a Picasso. But that was never her intention . . . The significant fact is that creativity allowed her to live out her final 15 years with a joy and a sense of purpose that she had been denied all the previous decades of her life. Moreover, while pursuing her vision, she managed to bring happiness and meaning to others.¹¹

Creativity, however we practice it, is part of our higher need for self-actualization. Industrial engineers have come to realize that the old assembly line jobs, with their mind-numbing monotony, have an adverse effect on workers.