Creative Activity and COVID-19 Captivity

Source: Shelley Carson

It looks like we will be adhering to stay-at-home restrictions for some time to come. By staying in, we’re helping prevent the spread of this deadly coronavirus and hastening the end of the pandemic. And from the numbers of the declining increases in cases, we’re doing a good job. We also have the opportunity for creative growth as individuals and as families.

Staying at home is an ideal time to get involved in creative work. In a previous post, I discussed some of the health benefits of engaging in creative activity. Here are some additional things to consider. In a landmark study of 300 seniors aged 65-100 years of age, gerontologist Gene Cohen¹ and his colleagues found that those seniors who engaged in professionally-guided creative activities had fewer doctor’s visits, less medication requirements, lower reports of depression, and higher morale scores than did those who were not involved in creative activities. In a large diary study,² creative activity was associated with positive emotions and a sense of flourishing. People who engaged in creative work reported not only feeling more positive emotions at the time of the creative activity but on the following day as well. So creative activity can have spillover effects on mood. Finally, and most important to our discussion today, creative activity can add meaning and purpose to our lives. In a 2018 article, creativity expert James Kaufman³ enumerated ways that creative work can help us derive meaning from our past, present and future life circumstances. This, in fact, is one of the great gifts of creative activity in my opinion. It allows us to see things about ourselves and our own environment from different perspectives, perspectives that can truly be mind-expanding.

The activity I’m suggesting today is called Your Living Message. It has several parts, and all of them involve some creative work. This week’s part is to develop your one-phrase creative message:

If you could share with others one message, one piece of wisdom, what would it be? All great works of art have a theme or message. Great lives, including your life, have a message as well. Discovering and sharing your message can imbue your life with purpose, increase your energy and enthusiasm, and generate passion for being alive at the same time.

Technology, medical advances, and innovations in communications, travel, and information-sharing have provided us with access to more knowledge and more varied experiences than any generation in human history. Yet few of us take the time to digest and synthesize that knowledge into meaningful living messages—what past generations have called “wisdom.” Now, the current stay-at-home time is providing this opportunity.

Think about it: There is no other being that possesses your exact combination of memories, knowledge, and skills. Your perspective is truly unique! How you interpret the body of experience and knowledge that you’ve acquired – your one-of-a-kind wisdom—is vitally important. The instructions for this activity are simple—but not easy.

• Think back over your life and consider how your experience and knowledge have come together to suggest an important piece of wisdom that you’d like to pass on to others. If you’re a senior, it could be wisdom you’d like to leave for future generations. If you’re in your middle adult years, it could be a piece of wisdom you’d like to share with younger people to make their road easier. If you’re a young adult, it could be something you think would benefit other young people your age, and if you’re a child, it could be something you would like children of future times to know about the importance of being a kid in the 21st century. (It’s important to include children in this activity, as well.)
• Your message should be concise—a phrase (and no longer than a sentence at most).
• Your message should be positive, or at least not negative, in its wording.
• Your message should be larger than yourself—that is, it should be applicable beyond your own personal experience.

Here are some examples of living messages from others.

• Remember that everything you do is a choice.
• Whatever you want, don’t put it off—do it now!
• Good things can come out of bad.
• Sometimes it pays to be a little deaf.

My own message is this: Be an engaged explorer of the universe.

I’ve been working with people on this activity for a number of years, and often, people will tell me that their message seems trite or obvious. That’s fine. Often wisdom does sound trite when spoken aloud, but that doesn’t make it any less wise. And it doesn’t make it any less important to embed that wisdom creatively into our culture. We’ll talk about ways to do that in the next post. And, indeed, people report a sense of purpose after doing this.

Think about your best message. Write it down and edit it until you get it the way you want it. It will help you stay grounded during these uncertain times.

Stay creative and stay well.