Restlessness

I hear lots of people (myself really included) complain of a feeling of restlessness or a sense of non-direction. They do many things, from class to games to drugs to advocacy, but nothing seems to quite put us at ease, and it's annoying in the extreme.

This is the sort of uneasiness targeted by professionally-crafted advertisements, whether we openly acknowledge that or not. A lot of advertisements, boiled down and deprived of all their bright colors, come down to "Feeling unsatisfied? This is what you are missing, and I will sell it to you, for money!" Consumerism and some materialist philosophy is actuated on this principle; the uneasiness I feel is because I perceive the things I have as insufficient, and wish to acquire more things, of one form or another.

Only humans (as far as we're aware) experience this sensation, the strange tension that comes when we're not tense. Every other animal fights to survive and looks for the basics of life (food, shelter, and so on), but we have these pretty well in hand and aren't satisfied. Having figured out how to systematically grow and ranch our food and become a globally dominant species, effectively stabilizing and guaranteeing our ability to fulfill the basic drives of life (for now), we still find ourselves not content.

So what's wrong with us, then? Are we just forever doomed to wander out our short existence, sitting on a hollow throne as we master the earth and find it wanting? Is something just fundamentally and totally inaccessible to us? Do we feel the echo of humanity's fall from grace, of our separation from divinity as many other traditions hold it?

No, sir or madame, this restlessness is no curse to blight the walkers of the earth. This, rather, is the evidence of humanity's single greatest gift. What is it, this buzzing that stirs in all our minds, the voice that nags you when you sit down exhausted after an odious task, demanding you do something else? Why do you wake up at God-awful hours of the night and morning, wondering why exactly a burrito is neither the tortilla nor the things inside, but some greater combination of the two?

The answer is simple. That restlessness is creativity.

People are constantly uncertain about the future, and it causes us a lot of stress. That's obviously not the best thing, but I think there's a silver lining to how "always in motion the future is" with the dark side's clouds and all. The thing about it is that creativity loves ambiguity. Can you imagine how dull your life would be if you were simply handed a script at the beginning and told "welp, here's what we're all doing, go for it?"

No, we feel this strange uneasiness and uncertainty for a reason. We humans, in "natural" terms, are really nothing special. There's no one thing in nature we're good at; we don't run especially quickly, we're not insanely strong, we can't breathe water, nothing. And yet we survived to the present day by creating our way out of whatever mess we found ourselves in. Natural selection acted on our species in a strange way. Given nothing else to work with, evolution simply emphasized our ability to reason and innovate in order to compensate for our physical shortcomings.

Us, and only us, out of all the myriad species of life, countless in their legions and endless in their diversity. Only we see a door and wonder abstractly where the key is, who has it, how they got it.

If ever you're tense without knowing why, consider the possibility that your fundamental essence wants you to be creating something, and I don't mean making a macaroni wreath or anything physical like that. It's totally possible to have a creative experience without doing anything. Just sitting and mentally wandering as you listen to music or the sounds outside can be extremely creative.

We're set up to do this sort of thing, and to not do it goes against our nature. That's why I'm always so concerned when schools start dismissing their art programs or their music departments, and when people write off humanities majors as easy or too "ethereal" or whatever. It's not that more quantitative fields inherently stifle creativity so much as our approach to them does, but that's another point.

There's a spark burning constantly in the back of all our minds, telling us to go and solve that math problem, or showing us a pretty cloudscape in our minds, or figuring out how a type of food is made, or whatever. It's annoying, to be totally honest; it never goes out, and it certainly isn't easy to control (imagine all the times you've suddenly become convinced your desk decidedly needs cleaning when you have a test the next morning). This little spark is a mercurial and fickle fairy, and causes us a great deal of tension by not always being on our side or not being accessible on command, but it's the most beautiful part of every single person.

I think that's what the Bible meant when it said we were made in God's image, not this silly material matter of iconography. We have hands, and eyes, and brains. Other animals can use tools and solve puzzles, but we can make things, inspired by a force we have no words to describe. I think it's easy to forget how wondrous and, yes, divine that power is, the drive and splendor of that little divine fire in your soul.

I'm getting distracted and lyrical, so let me just leave you with an awesome quote. The anthropologist A.L. Kroeber said that the best things can happen at "the highest degree of tension that can be creatively borne," and I think that's really awesome to consider. So, there's that.

TL;DR You're not bored because there's anything wrong with you.

P.S. Imma do a history of creativity tomorrow or the next day, depending on many things. Come back! It'll be fun, and there will be scones.