Transcriber: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Over 30,000 years ago,
someone went into the Chauvet Cave in France
and painted wondrous and beautiful images on the walls.
We see other examples of this primitive cave art
occurring across thousands of years,
across the continents.
The creators of these paintings
lived in a very different world than the one in which we live.
They had no modern medicine,
they had no cities,
they had to make their own tools.
They lived in a world fraught with peril,
and yet they created.
So what, then, are we to make of these cave paintings,
and the fact that they were created
at a time when survival itself was such a tenuous proposition?
There's one overriding conclusion
that I draw from the existence of these paintings,
and that is this:
that creation is an intrinsic part of our fibre as human beings.
It is as fundamental a drive
as the drive to obtain food, water or sleep.
And yet, we don't privilege it as such.
We preserve a sacred and inviolate space in our lives
to obtain food, water and sleep,
but we don't do the same with creation.
And the reason is obvious.
We don't need to create for our immediate physical survival.
We don't feel the same sort of tangible hunger to create
that we do for food, water and sleep.
Or do we?
Perhaps we do, in fact, feel the hunger to create,
but we don't recognize it as the hunger it is.
Perhaps this hunger manifests itself
in ways that we recognize but that we don't recognize as a hunger:
discontent, stress, unhappiness,
mental deterioration as we age,
physical problems.
I'm here today to propose a way of living
that preserves a sacred and inviolate space for creation in your life.
To make a case for making creation a part of every day, if possible.
There's a very specific image
that I want to us to conceptualize how to create this space.
It's an image that gets used in other technical contexts
with which you may be familiar,
but I hope you'll allow me to repurpose it for our uses here today.
I want you to imagine a lush and beautiful walled garden.
The walls of the garden protect what grows and flowers inside
from the incursions and demands of the outside world.
It's a place of beauty and comfort
that you keep for, perhaps, no other reason
than to provide you with beauty and comfort.
This is your sacred and inviolate creative space.
This is what I want you to envision.
But a walled garden doesn't build itself;
you have to do it.
You have to set aside the land for the garden,
you have to build up the walls to ensure that it's protected.
By the same token,
a walled garden of creativity is not just going to build itself in your life;
it's not just going to appear.
You have to aggressively carve out the space for your garden
and build up the walls to protect it.
I know it feels like there's no time in the day,
but you're wrong - there is.
There has to be. It's that important.
So perform a clear-eyed audit of the hours of your day.
Somewhere there's a television show that you can live without.
Somewhere there's 20 or 30 minutes less that you can spend online.
Somewhere there's some place that you can multitask
and reclaim time from your day and devote it to your garden.
Perhaps you can turn family time into family-creative time.
Let me give you an example from my own life.
I could commute to work by car,
and it would take me about 25 minutes each way.
Instead, I take the bus to work, and it takes me about 40 minutes each way.
So it's almost twice the amount of time.
But on that bus ride each day,
I'm able to sit and to think and read.
I'm able to make that time from my daily commute
part of my garden.
I've reclaimed that time for my life.
And you can do the same.
Now, if you perform this clear-eyed audit of the hours of your day,
and you just simply don't have the time to spare each day, that's okay.
I'm not here to tell you how big your garden should be.
It's not about the quantity of time that you spend
as much as it is about the quality of time that you spend.
So if you can't find time every day, find time every other day.
Find time once a week.
But whatever time you find, make it sacred.
Make it, in fact, a walled garden.
Now, there's another reason that I use the image of a walled garden specifically.
With a walled garden,
you control access to who sees what's in your garden.
By the same token,
it is not important -
let me repeat -
it is not important to the way of living that I propose
that you share the works you create with anybody.
So that right there takes "skill" and "talent" out of the equation.
It takes the risk inherent in creation out of the equation.
What I propose is that you engage in the process of creation,
you engage the creative part of your being,
you feel that spark.
And you can do that in an intensely private manner.
You don't have to show what you create to anybody.
Now make no mistake -
if you share the things that you create -
that you could open dialogues
that wouldn't have existed without you sharing your creations.
And these dialogues can shape and reinforce your creativity,
and there is value in it.
But you don't have to.
It's not important that you let everybody into your garden.
I don't stand in judgment of what qualifies as creative.
You are in the best position to know
when you're engaging the creative part of your being
and when you feel that spark.
I can't make that judgment for you;
nobody can.
So paint a painting.
Write a song.
Write a short story. Keep a blog. Cook a fine meal.
Take a dance class. Take a Judo class.
Work on your golf swing.
Whatever makes you feel the spark,
do that!
I even had a friend speak to me, in loving terms,
of the creative spark and engagement he felt
while retiling his bathroom.
It's that wide open.
Let me share with you the definition that I use for creativity.
Maybe it will be helpful to you; maybe not.
And that's okay.
In my mind,
I'm being creative when I'm building something that nobody is making me build.
When I'm a doer, and not a spectator.
When I'm a creator, and not merely a consumer.
When I'm telling a story.
When I'm commenting on what it means to be human.
That's when I feel the spark;
that's when I feel the fire.
That may help you and it may not.
You have to come up with your own definition.
Let me say, too, I don't believe for a second
that there's anybody who entirely lacks a spark of creativity.
I think that there are people whose hunger is more acute than others.
I think that there are people whose spark burns hotter than others,
but I don't believe that there's any human being
that entirely lacks the spark.
It's part of who we are.
So often I hear people say, "I'm a blank; I'm not an artist."
"I'm an engineer; I'm not an artist."
"I'm a mathematician; I'm not an artist."
That's not true.
You all have a creative spark in you.
Thus far, I've been speaking in a very anecdotal and unscientific manner,
which befits my station as a non-scientist.
But I don't mean to suggest by doing so
that there isn't substantial scientific evidence
in support of this way of living that I propose.
Because there is.
Let me cite for you one example.
Dr. Gene Cohen of George Washington University
has been studying seniors involved in arts programs.
The findings from this study - well, the preliminary findings, I should say -
are interesting.
They find that these seniors, who are involved in arts programs,
suffer from less depression, they take fewer medications,
they see the doctor less.
That's just one small example.
I firmly believe that as our understanding of the human mind increases,
that we will come to know more of the benefits
of keeping a walled garden of creativity.
But I'm going to leave the science talk to the scientists
and go back to speaking unscientifically and anecdotally.
I stand here today as a witness
of the power of creativity to change your life for the better.
I began my creative life in earnest when I was 21.
I experienced a sea-change in the quality of my life
on every possible measure.
From the time before I kept my garden to the time after, everything improved.
My family relationships improved, my friendships improved,
my work life improved;
everything got better.
And you can have that too, if you keep a walled garden.
And people living better lives equals a better society. I believe that.
I know what it means to work a difficult professional job
where there's a lot at stake,
that requires a lot of your physical and mental energy.
I know what it's like to come home and be tired,
and to have to divide that time with the time that you spend with your family,
and the time you spend volunteering in the community.
But I also know the power of this way of living.
Here's what I want to close on - it's what we haven't talked about yet.
If we assume, as I ask you to do,
that we have this fundamental or intrinsic drive to create,
the question becomes "Why do we have this drive to create?"
As I said, I'm not a scientist, but I think I have an answer.
As human beings,
we have profound and primal instincts for the survival of our physical being.
Does it not, then, stand to reason
that we have an equally profound and primal instinct
for the survival of our spirit?
For the survival of the essence of our being.
For the survival of our personality.
More than 30,000 years ago,
someone, perhaps like you and me,
went into a cave and painted on the wall;
and painted images of such beauty and grandeur
that we stand here talking about them today in 2012.
We stand in awe of the humanity that we share with them.
They speak to us across more than 30,000 years of humanity,
that has lived, loved and died -
an ocean of humanity.
Whoever painted this
stood in a small circle of torchlight and created
while the literal darkness surrounded them.
And in so doing, they defied a very different sort of darkness:
the darkness of oblivion.
That's their legacy to you and to me.
Defiance of the darkness of oblivion and survival of spirit.
We stand in the light of this brief moment surrounded by darkness,
the darkness of oblivion.
We can't defy death,
but we can deny the dark night of oblivion its victory
by creating an enduring testament to our humanity.
That's what we do.
We can choose to live in ferocious defiance of the darkness.
But ...
we have to make the time.
Thank you.
(Applause)