The colour in your life

What gives your life colour? Most people live on autopilot since our neural pathways operate under the law of least effort, or the path of least resistance. In a state of collective hallucination, most people are sleepwalking through life. Rarely, if ever, do they stop to think about what constitutes zest in their life.

Émile Zola writes: “If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I as an artist will answer you: I am here to live out loud". Certainly, it is creativity that washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Whether it's art or writing, the use of imagination to create original ideas is a form of inventiveness.

Creative endeavours are value-laden and they require us to be open to diverse experiences, display exceptional tolerance of ambiguity and seek out both complexity and novelty.

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down".

— Kurt Vonnegut

Importantly, unused creativity is not benign. It metastasises and turns into grief, rage and sorrow because we are, by nature, creative beings who are inclined towards self-expression. In simple terms, creativity enables you to connect with the beauty around you, with the language of art, for example, being universal and open to interpretation for anyone regardless of ethnicity, location or age.

However, on a more deeper level, creative expression functions as a mirror of our minds. It is the creative process which allows us (either consciously or subconsciously) to work through problems, connect with our true thoughts and find resolutions.

As well as enabling us to see the world in a better light, creative cognition is even associated with activity patterns in widespread neural networks involving memory processes, internally-focused attention or spontaneous modes of thought.

Indeed, dabbling and being creative produces an output which is essentially an expression of you. That's why I often feel that whenever I write, I am creating something that is not separate from me, but is instead an extension of me. I firmly believe that creativity is intelligence having fun.