Everyone Is Creative

We create our own reality. Inventing a reason not to go to work is creative endeavor. Every lie we tell ourselves or others is creative output. We're geniuses at the sideways compliment, imagining another's thoughts, storying our past. We tell stories to make sense of our world. Everyone is creative and we can change our lives with a tiny thought torque. My best friend Beckie and I worked together at two soulless management consulting companies: Joe Versus The Volcano with moderately better lighting. Eight creatives in a grey cubed room. We had to reinvent happiness every day. This time was Easter week. Victoria had gotten us each a seasonal Pez. It was a grim day, with false deadlines rushed by necktied zombies. We were cranky and overworked. I threw my bunny Pez against the cubical wall. The neck bent open and spilled candy on the counter. Oh oh, I said. I killed my Pez dispenser. I swiveled my chair around to see all eyes twinkling. Somebody shut the door. I stuck my xacto knife in the bunny's neck, drew and printed a blood stain, and a police line yellow tape. Somebody printed bloody pawprints. The Pez police drew a chalk body outline, while all the monitor toys crowded behind the police line. A pink slinkie became the murderer's escape route up the cubicle wall. We created for days. We made a wanted poster for a senior vice president we called Nick the Thumb. We buried my Pez bunny in my Giorgio Armani eyeglass case outside the building in a solemn ceremony complete with frocked minister and mourners. We attracted the building's security, who were zombies in security uniforms. We discovered the murder victim's grieving widow was having an affair with the minister. She was pregnant. We staged a rush wedding, and, oh joy! one day I came back from lunch to report an actual wedding was being set up in the atrium! We gathered our celebrants, the hugely pregnant bride and the groom, and ran downstairs with cameras. Flounder from The Little Mermaid saw the baked cod and fainted. For weeks we had color and light and joy in our corporate lives. We created a reality to share. All of us have this power, this majesty, this bliss, this sublime creativity. I am delighted today remembering the taste of joy, and I recommit right now to recreate it every day.