The Center of All Creation

The government is always trying to ask people to be creative these days. You can trust the Singapore government to always come up with fancy programmes and even fancier buildings for our intiatives. Please don't misunderstand, our government is right in saying creativity is important but you can't quite force creativity. You can take time to nurture it but It is in writing that I discovered one thing recently.

The center of all creation is love.

I can quite safely say that people who work in artistically related jobs be it in art itself, music, drama and writing do it out of love. Yes there are those who do it for money but anyone knows that behind every person who actually makes a big buck out of this lays many many others who are struggling with survival or working to make ends meet so that they may try to pursue their love. If not for love, who would commit such insanity?

It is not just about artistically related work. Even in science or maths, new inventions, theories and formulas are found based on love and passion. Without that, what would drive people to the state of obsessiveness in the search for a new breakthrough? People called Einstein and Newton insane just like some who say the line between a genius and a madman is thin. Why else would anyone go through thousand tries to find the light bulb?

Yet look at what that little light bulb has done for mankind.

Depending on your faith, you may or may not believe that the world is the creation of a single being. The world is so much more polluted these days but if you look at how the entire natural system is supposed to work, it truly is the greatest invention of all time. The human body which still is a work of mystery to scientists and doctors is but a simple example. How does anyone think of all these? Love, I tell you if you believe in God and that Man is born out of God's love.

Some people are naturally creative but I never think that the process of creation is easy. An idea may come more easily to one who is more open to creation but the whole process of bringing the idea to its birth and full glory is a tedious, and in many situations, a painful one.

An idea is but an idea. It is in refining that idea that hours are tolled over. It is in the sweat, stress and tears that ideas are completed. Just look at entrepreneurs. The journey of an entrepreneur starts with an idea, goes on to the business plan where the idea is so brutally torn apart sometimes it becomes a different thing altogether. Even when the idea comes to life, it becomes the start of a platform for more ideas, more sweat and more toll.

Sounds tough? Then why do people do it?

Love. Some use the word passion.

It is possible to do it without love. However, if one should actually make money out of what he loves, it eventually comes to a point where one begins to question if he or she can continue without love. Work of creation dies when there isn't enough love to sustain it. Even if the work can still be produced, a certain magic is gone.

That brings me to what people always say about one must love what one does. Yes it possible one doesn't need to, but that passion makes all that difference - the difference between working as a robot and working as a human.