Creativity as I see it
By Mohiuddin Abro
BS35 2936
(Note – The following account is that of a personal nature. The things I find “creative” may differ from that of the reader)
Creativity. It’s a word that has more or less fascinated my whole life. Oxford dictionary defines being “creative” as involving the use of imagination or original ideas in order to create something new. If that is to be believed, then our childhood is the most imaginative phase of our lives.
I was born on 14th of August 1988 to a Sindhi father and a mother migrated from Aligarh, India. In a time when preference was given on one’s own ethnic group, my parents were innovators and trend-setters. It was the mixing of two very different and unique worlds, brought together by a bond of marriage. I like to think that this affected me and my outlook on life – because even to this day, I feel I have an identity crisis in progress.
I remember hearing the word creative for the first time when I was around 8-10 years old. And I didn’t get it. I didn’t get what It wholly means, what it denotes to. Maybe I was at a tender age to fully grasp the concept, but gradually, I began to associate it with a medium.
And that was films.
Creativity and films are words that I have always connected together; because it was through movies I understood what creativity can aspire to be. The art of making films, and watching them at a film theatre.
It’s the film plots that can guide us out of our lives and provide supreme escapism on the theatre screen. “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” was my first taste at experiencing something that was truly out of this world. The concept of artificial intelligence, an assassin robot sent from a future where machines rule the earth and there is a war being waged between the machines and humans. If the last sentence isn’t creative, then I do not know what is. Similarly, the story of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic, Psycho – where the climax is the biggest shocker of all, when it is discovered that the main character is himself distorted in the head, that he wears a wig and believes he is his own “mother”.
“Twelve Angry Men” was another film that opened up my mind and made me realize how a film can tackle issues of racism, ageism, the legal concept of “innocent until proven guilty”, and having “reasonable doubt”, all being portrayed under the confined space of a jury room for almost the whole film.
Films inspire me in real life by watching our “heroes” triumph on screen. There are numerous examples of this – One special one for me is “Rocky” (1976). It shows a down-and-out boxer who gets the shot of a lifetime to fight against the heavyweight boxing champion but nobody takes him seriously. He wants to prove to all of them that he is not just “another bum from the neighborhood”, which he triumphantly does in the end.
In today’s world of people who are involved in the culture of fast-moving, and back-stabbing their fellow brethren at the definite of times, creativity is something that remains unharmed and is something that keeps on evolving. As long as there is a healthy imagination in the society's collective consciousness, creativity will always be there.
It amazes me personally when people in today's world do not think of things as creative or search for innovation. Instead, the general consensus has become that of finding something that just fulfills their wants or needs, and that is it. Maybe It's not their fault they have become robotic and mindless in today's largely selfish society - you cannot really blame them. Today's world is much more meaner and competitive then it was, say, 50 years ago. Parents dismiss their children’s questions on life or everyday matter because they find it annoying. It is from here that their children start to learn to stop asking "stupid" questions and this is where the cycle of creativity starts to get damaged in our minds.
I do not see creativity as just something that has to be from outer-space, involves time-travel, new and more smartphones, new technology, etc. To put it simply, creativity for me is anything that is "out-of-the-box", that differs from the norms of society and life. We can see everyday examples for this. A child dancing on the streets of Karachi to Sindhi folk music, with a crowd gathered around as spectators - that is creativity for me. A man portraying a character as a high-class socialite woman on Pakistani television - that is creativity. Imran Khan invents reverse-swing bowling in cricket that deceives batsmen in the 1980's - that is creativity. A man with no arms writes with his feet, and also oil-paints - that is creativity. Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech that talks about one day imagining a race-free America, where white and black children play together in streets - that is creativity. German music composer Ludwig Van Beethoven's greatest works has been considered those he wrote in his later years, when he had become completely deaf - that is creativity for me.
Creativity is something which we should all strive for. It is that level of mind where we should forget about all the petty things in life, sit back and ponder on the life’s many wonders and should see it in a different, alien perspective. It is when we are in an out-worldly state that we can truly touch the inner creativeness inside our selves.