What creativity means to me

A life lesson from video games and butterflies.

"Zen-flora" by Zoie Hing

A good friend of mine is a fan of the Overwatch franchise, a futuristic first-person shooter game. He is particularly fond of the character Zenyatta.

Zenyatta is a robotic being whose design is based on Tibetan monks. His character embodies the ideals of peace and patience.

The polar opposite of my entire being.

"Embrace tranquility." - Zenyatta

I found myself stuck in this familiar situation of not being able to tap into my creativity. My professor told us to doodle what creativity meant to us. I thought long and hard and scribbled here and there.

The first doodle ended up scrapped in a recycle bin.

It was not until 2 a.m. after a rough session of Calculus II that I remembered there was a limited edition Overwatch event ending soon.

Then I wondered if my friend would be playing that night.

This lead me to thinking about Zenyatta, and then I found my creativity.

"I dreamt I was a butterfly" - Zenyatta

One of Zenyatta's most iconic lines from the video game is, "I dreamt I was a butterfly."

I began to compare creativity to a butterfly for my doodle.

We know something beautiful is out there in the world. We are often trained to robotically fall into routine or plan every step of our work. We know though a better solution, a better idea, always exists.

The idea remains elusive. It can be there one second and flutter away the next.

It may arrive after hours of searching. Other times, it may escape our grasp, no matter how patient we are.

On other occasions, it arrives when we least expect it.

There is a theory called the "butterfly effect" that states the beating wings of a butterfly one one side of the planet can cause a hurricane on the other. I believe the smallest actions we do and the most random people we meet can be a channel for our creativity.

These ideas all stemmed from one video game character. A video game character who happened to be a close friend's favorite. A friend who I may have never met if my parents banned me from joining orchestra. A person who I may have never befriended if he never moved from Texas, and if I was not the loud girl who would not shut up next to him in class.

I believe creativity blossoms from our experience and the world around us. While there are "bad" ideas, these ideas serve as experiences that lead to finding our most creative solution. Creativity is the idea that resonates with our experiences and our needs the most.

"Doodle" by Samantha Ackerman

A doodle by my fellow classmate, Samantha Ackerman, emphasizes this point.

Creativity can be described as the moment open our minds and take in every aspect of our lives, no matter how trivial they seem. We have the feeling "we get it" because we find experiences we possessed all along.

This being said, the creative process is not always an easy one. There is no guarantee that our most creative idea will appear after hundreds of failed efforts.

Perhaps the key to finding our creativity is to allow ourselves and our lives, rather than our problem or task, determine the outcome.

In the words of Zenyatta, "A closed mind is already defeated."