Searching for Meaning through Creativity

The power of human creativity is obvious everywhere, in the technologies we use, in the buildings we inhabit, in the clothes we wear and in the films we watch. But the reach of creativity is very much deeper. It affects not only what we put in the world, but also what we make of it – not only what we do, but also how we think and feel about the world. We spend much of our time trying to figure out what it all means. We don’t just see the world as it is. We view it from our own internal reference; that is we interpret the world through the particular ideas and beliefs that have shaped our own cultures and our personal outlook. All of this stands between us and the world acting as a filter on what we perceive and what we think. “What we think of ourselves and the world makes us who we are and what we can be” (Robinson, K.2009 p81).

However, if we can create our own world view then we can recreate it too by taking a different perspective and reframing our situation and this is where creativity has a huge part to play. In the preface to Man’s Search for Meaning, Gordon Allport manages to convey the capacity of the human spirit to triumph over it’s surroundings. “to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.” (Frankl, V. 1959, p. 9). The prisoners in Auschwitz and other concentration camps; by choosing to see their situation as an undertaking; that if overcome, would prove them worthwhile members of society, was ‘reframing’ at its most powerful. Frankl himself later in the novel says “without suffering and death life cannot be complete”. (Frankl, V. 1959, p. 76). It is a splendid account of the human spirit that people could look upon such extreme suffering as an addition to their experience of life and in doing so could transcend their physical environment.

Frankl also asserts the power of the imagination. “Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain (they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner selves was less. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom”. (Frankl, V. 1959, p. 47). It is therefore of vital importance that we instil in our children the power of creativity and imagination.