Received 15 April 2016; accepted 2 July 2016; published 5 July 2016

ABSTRACT

Being creative revolutionizes things toward novelty. And any revolution is messy, quiet or noisy, bloody or no. Novelty upsets the existing order of things, and so being creative is quite topsy-turvy, impossible to chart in advance. This essay adumbrates such messy creativity in five ways: one, being creative is not all-chaotic, two, being creative is not all-arbitrary, three, being creative is repetitive, four, being creative is graded, and finally, how necessary being creative is. This essay treats this theme of being creative never treated in any essay anywhere, yet the theme is absolutely indispensable for being alive as human that is part and parcel of being creative. Without being creative we are reduced to mere subhuman existence.

Keywords:

Revolution, Chaos, Arbitrary, Repetition, Grades, Life

1. Introduction

It is quite difficult to write on creativity because it is unpredictable and explosive, but it is necessary to write on it because it is essential to life itself. Creativity is being creative, to revolutionize things toward novelty. And any revolution is messy, quiet or noisy, bloody or no. Novelty upsets the existing order of things, and so being creative is quite topsy-turvy, impossible to chart in advance.

This essay adumbrates such messy “being creative” from five angles: one, being creative is not all-chaotic, two, being creative is not all-arbitrary, three, being creative is repetitive, four, being creative is graded, and finally, five, how necessary being creative is. Inevitably, this essay cannot be neatly systematic but a mere adumbration, barely coherently touching “being creative”.

2. Being Creative Is Not All-Chaotic

Without chaos, there would have been no God or literally anything to speak of. Chaos is an absolute king. This statement is surprising multidimensional. To begin with, chaos is the mother of creation. In the beginning, it is not God but chaos, “without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep”. It was here that God blows his breath of creation. Without chaos here, no God can exercise his power to do anything, much less to create.

And secondly, the reverse is also true. Being creative is itself chaotic. Creativity has no preset railroad; being creative cannot be charted and understood definitively. In being creative, literally anything goes, and all sorts of things take place, imaginable and unimaginable, serious and not-at-all serious. Chaos is the whirlwind that drives out all order whatever, anywhere anytime.

When Aristophanes declared, “Whirl is King, having driven out Zeus”, his words stick in the craw of our sensitive decency. The saying appears in Aristophanes, Clouds, line 379, as spoken by Shepsiades (Aristophanes, 1993) . This is because Aristophanes was referring to whirl the chaos that is new King, to wit, the ruler who is creative as whirlwind that goes all over everywhere. Being creative always disturbs whatever there is that is set, and disturbance is uncomfortable chaos, for no one can dwell in chaos, formless and dark, without rhyme or reason.

“How could such utter chaos be creative? Chaos is chaotic, and that’s that, right?” Well, chaos is miseries. Without chaotic whirlpool of various miseries, no Lincoln, Marx, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King would have been provoked into actions, to create a new order undreamed of, to set right what has been so messy so miserable. All sorts of creations have been provoked forth out of chaotic mess.

“But then, obviously, chaos itself does not create; chaos is chaos, all random all without order that is solely the situation quite unlivable by any people. Is being creative simply chaotic and disturbing? What distinguishes chaos from creation? What is being creative?” A sensitive probe you just gave, my friend. Chaos and creativity form a pair of contrary notions that are yet surprisingly correlative, as chaos provoking forth creation, as above described, but as you rightly said, chaos as such is all-opposed to being creative as such, and cannot create. That is why their correlation is surprising.

“Coincidence of opposites” is a favorite of Nicholas of Cusa; it is concretely presented in the situation here of chaos and creativity. “Co-arising” has been elucidated above. The “opposition” of chaos to creativity is all too obvious as well, for chaos is disorder while creativity begins a new order. But “beginning” is itself a dialectical dynamics―on one hand, beginning disturbs the existent base out of which it begins, and, on the other hand, beginning creates steady new order for all things to dwell, ab initio.

Being creative is jumping alive with kids, all so contrary to begin living. Being creative is a dynamite, hidden and apparent, to disturb toward the novelty of new order. Being alive is always a landmine that explodes to begin again and again, without respite. Being simply alive is thus already being creative of the novelty, welcomed or unwelcome, and our task of living is to steer the unpleasant novelty that destroys―not just disturbs―toward the genuine novelty that makes things thrive together.

In other words, surprisingly, chaos begins all creation as chaos is never creation. Chaos creates creation by opposing it. This is a further point about chaos. Thus, in all, two crucial points usually unnoticed are raised. One, chaos is mother of creativity. Two, creativity is itself chaos original, profound, and wildly alive. These two points are essential to being creative.

3. Being Creative Is Not All-Arbitrary

The last statement above implies an answer to the natural question, “How is being creative all over different from being simply arbitrary?” This is because chaos is synonymous with arbitrary. This question arises quite naturally in view of the fact that nothing is immune from creativity, for “nothing comes nothing”, as they say; things are ever bubbling up from one moment to another, as natural science tells us that things are composed of whirling atoms and electrons that even go in and out of existence themselves.

The whole cosmos is creative all over out of nothing. Is the cosmos―meaning “beautiful order”―arbitrary, then? How could “order” be “arbitrary”? How could creativity be different from arbitrariness? Of course, we all know that being arbitrary is without order, and yet being creative goes all over unpredictable, unpredictable is arbitrary, and so creativity is quite disorderly quite chaotic and arbitrary. At least so the situation appears to be, being creative as arbitrary.

But there must be a certain divide between the arbitrary and the creative, for the arbitrary is sheer mess and disorder, where nothing definite holds, evil or good. In contrast, being creative at least results in something definitive and precious, whatever it is that we while being creative would never know. The judgment on creativity belongs not to those in the midst of creative activities but to those sensitive observers outside if not later. We must then go see and observe a concrete example of being creative, since being arbitrary is too random to be observable.

Interestingly, Confucius’ provocative creativity opens up no arbitrary floodgate to “anything goes”. Our wrong impression that Confucius was traditional and ethical has a grain of truth. He did set a certain pattern of right living. His “one” raised is one corner of a definitive square of some truth, and three other corners were expected to arise from the students, but the square was not expressed, but seems to be silently nodded at as a tacit assumption. Still, the square of Confucius was quite strict, not even admitting any sort of heterodoxy, such as Hsün Tzu’s 荀子 no-nonsense pragmatism. Confucius seems to have a definitive though ineffable tradition of right living.

Well, Confucius, unexpectedly, comes in here to show us, that creativity is reverent of fellow beings. Being creative reveres existence whatever, never doing violence to any of beings as being. We humans are ever free to voluptuously throw things about all over, but it is reverence that divides Mother Teresa who serves the poorest of the poor from Hitler who insanely burns the entire race in the ovens of Auschwitz. The former type of throwing things around ascends up to the reverential heights, while the latter descends down to arbitrary depths of despicable destruction.

“How does reverence differ from fear?” A good probing question you raised, my friend. Well, since both reverence and fear are intense emotions, they differ not logically but emotionally at heart, not different in mind. We must feel reverence to revere someone, and we must feel fear to know what it means to fear. Feeling reigns all around in reverence and in fear, even though they differ.

Fear cautiously keeps us away in distance from entities that harm us or stun u, such as scorpions and electric wires, Neroes and Hitlers, in poisons in shocks, in oppressive miseries. They are logically distinct but are all included in repellent fear. The reverse is also valid. Reverence forbids us to facilely approach close, whether to sublime beauty or to admirable heights of sages and saints, as familiarity breeds contempt not reverent. Again, these logical differences are embraced in awed reverence. Reverence is ever on its knees, looking up at a distance, awestruck silent. In addition, importantly, we know at heart how different it is to revere from feeling fear.

Now, even though very different one from the other as shown above, reverence and fear come together to prepare us to meet God in person, for God is nowhere to be observed objectively. We would then revere high heavenly God while in fear of his untouchable august holiness, knowing that “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”, where the Bible combines our reverence of God with our awe at his fearsome holiness. Difference is not opposed to combination.

History as a record of our activities through the ages is a raw reflection of humanity through millennia, quite surprising. In such comprehensive history, we see that, again, life can be stale toward death or creative toward bubbling existence, and can be continuous repeating crises, one after another, of either exciting nobility or despicable wallowing in selfish inferno. In contrast, being arbitrary is “arbitrary” all the way through, and could not care less about reverence of whatever sort.

In all this record of history, being arbitrary shows itself to be just going all over arbitrarily. Being arbitrary is totally disorderly and violent destructive of integrities of beings, while being creative is reverent toward the novelty of emerging things thanks to being created with reverence. Creativity and reverence go hand in glove together; when we see one, we see the other. Arbitrariness and violence also go together; we see one, we also see the other.

Looking back, we are surprised. “Unknown, unpredictable, and unimaginable” are quite big negative words that persistently haunt human creativity, which wanders all over quite arbitrary. Still, the arbitrary is just that, simply arbitrary, where absolutely nothing positive can be seen. In contrast, an amazing contradiction continues to haunt being creative. It is that these negative words are the mother that gives birth to vastly open-ended harvest of unheard-of cornucopia, all-serendipitous, all positive.

But how can the negative give birth to the positive? We continue to marvel at creativity. Such amazement at the contradictory is the essential miracle of being creative. This miracle showcases the arbitrary freedom of creativity. In fact, creativity can even claim that the so-called “arbitrary” is just an offshoot of creativity; it is the arbitrary creativity gone astray, and in the straying-out symbolizes the vastness of priceless creativity, while the simply arbitrary is without value. Still, all things in Mother Nature are vastly creative, even to an arbitrary degree. Creativity is our sheer surprise, shown raw in being arbitrary.

Surprisingly, arbitrary creativity can be seen as creativity at its height at its summit. Creativity can play with unreason in logic and in disaster; play with unreason is reason at work beyond reason, quite arbitrary. Creativity freely threads itself through the illogic of falsities, dilemmas, and paradoxes that are impossibilities in self-demise, and then creativity comes out playfully vigorous. Such arbitrary creativity is logos alogoi, reason beyond reasoning. Such creativity playing with illogic prepares creativity to play with illogical disasters in actuality. On creativity playing and dancing with disasters, please see Kuang-ming Wu’s “The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang Tzu” (Wu, 1990) , Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1990, pp. 281-359.

When disasters strike suddenly without rhyme or reason, creativity responds by wailing out in bloody dance without rhyme or reason, maimed or burned, as Dr. Frankl learned from deadly Auschwitz to tough it out with “Never say die!” (Frankl, 1984) . Such is arbitrary creativity that is the highest reason beyond decent reasoning, the stubborn illogical reason living in tough illogical actuality ongoing daily, both reasoning and actuality so arbitrary. Creativity arbitrary is creativity supreme devil may care, stubbornly actual beyond actuality simple and raw.

Arbitrary creativity dances in joy in the midst of bloody disasters totally impossible to dance. Such creative illogic matches with concrete illogic of disasters, in joy beyond all joys, continually dancing where all things are against all dances. “Beyond, impossible, and against” indicate the supreme creative illogic absolutely arbitrary, absolutely unconquerable.

Thus it is that arbitrary creativity turns illogic and disasters into serving dancing joy of life. This turning is part of the mighty creativity at work in invincible joy dancing. Creativity turning is itself arbitrary creativity dancing itself out in the midst of disastrous illogic. Arbitrary creativity is almighty creativity supreme, flooding everywhere in dancing joy, precisely in devastating disasters. And so, the arbitrary is so wildly vast in freedom, to indicate “creativity”. As its original essence, “arbitrary creativity” soars out unbelievably to an arbitrary degree, raising eyebrows of sober decency―into joy even in the midst of disasters, quite incredibly.

4. Being Creative Is Repetitive

Creativity in all its grades repeats itself continually. There is repetition and there is repetition, however. Repetition of things identical droning on is one sort. Being sensitized to such droning repetition as itself exciting is another sort. “Droning” repetition of daily living we never mind at all, though, for quitting it quits living. To realize this fact is to enter the excitement of sheer repetition, of things identical or things different, and “different” connotes “new” and “renewal”.

And so, being creative can be, and often is, repetitive. Repetition of being creative is sheer excitement, because here repetition is rhythm of existence bubbling forth continuously. The rhythm of day and then night repeats life alive dynamic back and forth, and each “back” is new, each “forth” is also new, to compose daily renewals repeating so exciting invigorating. This renewing repetition of Mother Nature ever creative is itself repeated in our human creative repetition, in continuous provocation through metaphors and ironies, this way.

“As (I cite one) A, so (for you to produce) Bs (that I do not know)”―such is metaphor at work. “As (I cite one) A, so (for you to produce) not-Bs (that are unpredictable by me)”―such is irony performing itself. In these chain-reactions, Bs and not-Bs are for you to produce. Here I must be sensitively creative enough to choose the right A to enable, provoke, and empower you and inducing you to be interested in A, for you thereby produce many Bs and many not-Bs, unsuspected and unpredictable.

It is thus that creativity alludes to let create. Creativity is the mother that gives birth to new creativity; such chain-reactions are creative repetitions. The so-called “classics” are the things that since time immemorial have the power to provoke deep feelings, heartfelt, among their admirers, forever unfading. The classics are forever creative. They are in fact the fountains of the power of creativity in us all.

Such repetition of provocation seldom proceeds by using “systems” that have their finality to close things off, while creativity forever opens out by provocative metaphors and ironies, again and again, in creative repetition. Metaphors and ironies dot and jot down, continually and repeatedly, just the beginning “one”, so as to provoke further developments in the “many” unexpected and unpredictable direction.

Such is Confucius in tireless creativity (Wu, 2016) . Thus Confucius’ words are worded in poetic parsimony terse, short, and sharp, as such an evoking poetic pack spreads out in limitless implications and expanded connotations. Nothing is simpler than his poetic “one” so compact in all his sayings, whose common simplicity is yet so fecund, forming a sheer poetry, so much so that none of his translations already countless in world history have yet to hit straightly at what his point involves in each of his terse sayings bequeathed to us.

It is in this way that his simple and straight sayings, always in sparsest one-pack each, are extremely razor- sharp and powerful, as if to gouge our heart out, “halting in words and quick to act” (4/24). Whatever Confucius says does things into vigorous renewals of living. What Confucius dots on daily living amounts to a performative utterance. For him, to say is to show and to effect, with concrete results in actual living. His sayings express concrete thinking thoroughly actual. His “one” skewers it all in scholarship, in his way to live in poetry parsimonious, and in simplicity that acts and effects concretely.

Such poetic parsimony rhymes with concrete actuality that suddenly comes and suddenly goes, dotting and jotting our days. If “well begun, half done”, then Confucius begins well and leaves his students to do the rest of the half. If behind Einstein is his teacher his mother, then behind today’s science stands Confucius’ education provoking us forward. Confucius the teacher is a provocateur supreme, alive to let create alive, never an Aristotle droning out dead information. All this amounts to saying that Confucius was a provocative revolutionary.

On another important front, our turning of trite ad stale repetitions into exciting and tremendous ones depends totally on our observant sensitivity to happen. We observe that identical 24 hours of identical breathings, eating, washings, walking, and talking, all activities of yesterday, are repeated quite differently today. The yesterday is repeated differently today.

Such oxymoron, “different repetition”, precisely describes and typifies daily ongoing, again and again. Life is lived, and so life is to be lived, in different repetitions. And so, we must―for it behooves us to―turn trite repetitions into tremendous ones, by patterning our thinking and our living according to “different repetitions” of our common days that flow on day after day, repeating same different.

To live is to repeat anew, and it is totally up to us who are alive to turn identical repetitions into “different repetitions” never dull and ever exciting. “Exciting repetition” describes being creatively alive. “Excitement” is a synonym of being creative and of being alive. Dead people do not get excited, and even if they do, we would not know if they do or not.

“Alive” is repetitions of living, ever waiting for us being alive to turn into different repetitions, which are exciting repetitions, and both our turning and our exciting repetition alive are the works of our being creative, ever renewing ever afresh, and the “ever” here expresses repetition of being creative. Who says repetition is not creative? Thus, repetition is ubiquitous in Mother Nature in daily ongoing. Not noticing this fact turns repetition stale, bored toward death. Noticing this fact discerns repetition as different each time things are repeated toward exciting “repetition of creativity”.

5. Being Creative As Graded

“Being creative” has in itself many shades and grades, from trivial to exciting. At the lowest level we see something already existing refurbished in a fancy dress. And then in the next level is a rearrangement of law and order essential to things to even exist. Still higher up, there is Confucius who claims to merely elucidate the priceless tradition and not create (7/1), to end unwittingly in creating afresh all novel.

Still higher up, there exist probing excitements of creative power up to sheer novelty in Edison, in Einstein, and in many others. Thanks to them, all of us human persons now have things hitherto not-existent, such as telephone and music recording, relativity against absolute space and time, splitting atoms into atomic power, as well as abolishment of human cruelty to human, slavery, witch hunt, and the like. At the top highest level, we see Confucius in brimming joys while living in life-long failures, and Chuang Tzu frivolous when profound, profound when frivolous, all to shine forth creativity in their incredible blends, failures and joy, frivolity and profundity.

Confucius joyous in lifelong failures and struggles is our true hero of true success, isn’t he? We hear of such Confucian hero in recent days. With a sack of lunch, he went to watch the bulletin board of a medical school announcing the names of those accepted. He persistently went, while many of his classmates were accepted, became doctors, and even retired. He still went to the bulletin board year after year. After 20 long years, he finally got accepted! This person is our unsung hero. It is easy to bask in success. To handle failure for so long not giving up is “true success”. He is our Confucius today.

Now, graded creativity as above noted shows our gradual amazement ascending. On the trivial levels of refurbishing and rearranging, we clap our hands in admiration, of course. On the humility of claiming to mere explain, not create, and turned creative, we admire and applaud. On the top levels of inventions of unimaginable novelties such as splitting atoms, persistent joys in persisting failures, and combining the contraries of the frivolous and the profound, we turn aghast and prostrate in our adoration. It is in fact sheer joy and excitement just to survey such varieties of creativity.

In general, togetherness is one typical mode of creativity in all these grades. Symbiosis of all body organs creates the living days, on and on. Now we can dip ourselves in the enchanting joys of being creative together, at whatever level, even at all levels together. Such is love. To say, to realize, and to live love as stronger than death and as more ferocious than hell is the climax of being creative even to death and beyond death. To think of it, togetherness is an actual chaotic mother of creativity, isn’t it? And isn’t it already a part of the joy of being creative, just to write all this on being creative?

In other words, the highest summit of creativity that commands our stunned adoration is where creativity is alive to the extent of chaotic wild whirlwinds, vastly free so much as to seem arbitrary to sober decency, and constantly appearing repeatedly as invigorating creativity, ever. Thus, failing to recognize creativity supreme so vast as above described risks deteriorating “chaos” into sheer plain chaos, scattering things “arbitrarily” at random, and “repeating” routines quite boringly into burning out of life-vitality at the core of things.

All these are risks in losing sight of creativity in the midst of original chaos as the creative arbitrary and exciting repetitions. In contrast, the riches of vigor abound where chaos, the arbitrary, and repetition are realized as essential components of creativity. Creativity is the constitutive pivot ubiquitous that saves the ubiquitously whirling chaos, the arbitrary, and repetition from their devastating destruction of things.

6. Necessity: How Indispensable Being Creative Is

“Wow! What a mess this whole bit is! Radically dispersed bits and pieces scatter all over without any head or any tail. All those themes of all four sections, chaos, arbitrary, grades, repetition, go in their own separate ways and disparate directions. Besides, each section is messed up, without rhyme or reason. What is going on here?” I have to agree with your astute observation, my dear friend.

This is why at the beginning of this essay, “being creative” is characterized as “revolutions”, and no revolution so adventurous and breathless is tidy, decent, and comfortably settled. Here all things upset all other things, and each matter and item is itself radically self-incoherent so messy so topsy-turvy. Nothing is settled in revolution so bloody messy.

Such is “being creative as revolutions” all over. If there exists any deep-seated “one” that pervades creativity, it must be daring “joy” through disastrous mess, both of creativity itself and of daily ongoing. And worse yet, this revolutionary joy is itself so wildly diverse and various as to defeat all our sensible understanding. This joy of revolutionary creativity is itself upsetting to our decent orderly logic; no revolution is ever comfortable.

Still, being creative somehow draws our interest, because creativity presses forward, and life constantly goes forwarding itself. It is thus that “being creative” attracts us. In addition, one more crucial point must be noticed. This essay is titled “being creative”, not doing creative deeds. Creativity is our constant way of living forward, not an occasional emergence of deeds but our steady nisus and ruling trend of living in its totality. Like it or not, we simply ought to―we owe it to ourselves to―be creative at every single breathing of ours, at every single moment of our days aware or unawares, in sickness and in health, never stale set toward death.

“Well, then, leave us alone, out of all this mess, pal. Why do we have to bother with such spooky ‘creativity’ unpredictable and uncertain? We are too busy to bother with such plaything all so unsettling, unsure, and unreliable”. O my dear friend, I am surprised aghast that you so sensitive and decent of all persons still raise such an unbelievable question after all the above elucidation of being creative.

Can you not see the all too obvious necessity of being creative so as to even proceed with your daily routine of busy life? Pull out creativity, and all your days collapse. Don’t you remember what the above said? We have claimed that creativity ever renews itself, to ever begin things that turn different at every moment, to result in joy at every moment. This description of creativity as new, as beginning, and as different and joy-full every moment, precisely describes how life goes on, doesn’t it?

Such inter-match between creativity and life shows how essential creativity is to life. Creativity is absolutely indispensable to our daily living, at every moment. Such is what is elucidated in all those sections above. So, it would be insane, as it would be simply suicidal, to refuse to cultivate creativity that is bones-and-marrow of our daily ongoing, busy and not-busy.

“Well begun, half done”, and “All is well that ends well”, they say. Put together, what do they say? The middle is missing here. What do both sayings say about the strenuous ongoing in the middle? Interestingly, the answer is that the beginning saying combined with the end saying typify what is not beginning not ending, that is, the middle, and such “middle” is forever active, forever forwarding ad infinitum. Let me explain.

Each moment trying to begin well is itself to end well, to bring itself well into the next moment that tries to begin well to end well, and its ending is now a new beginning, and the series goes on. This series is the dynamic middle. Our days are actually the middle dynamism portrayed by the beginning saying and the ending saying put together. We are Home Viator both beginning not ending and both beginning and ending, on and on ad infinitum.

We can see how life can be either excitingly prospective or else dull and retrospective, bubbling creative or else trite and stale, jumping alive or else slowly dying, booming historic or classified historical, in other words, living or dead. Our life-task―and we are born into this task, are we not―is to turn daily repetition that is stale into daily repetition of creative excitement. And this task of turning itself amounts to enhancing creativity for which we were born.

To put the whole bit another way, we must realize―realization is part of being creative―that we are ever sitting on a silent volcano of creativity, waiting to explode into fabulous novelty. It is up to us either to idly and passively sit on it until it explodes on us to our face and our life, or else we can silently in sensitivity discern the tremendous potentiality of such explosion, and take initiative to take advantage of such positive potentiality. Our life-task lies in choosing prudently in advance and putting into practice our performative discernment.

All in all, this essay has probed the depths of being creative, to appreciate being creative absolutely mighty and invincible. Here one more thread besides joy through all this thrust of revolutionary creativity can be noticed. It is that “being creative” is truly what Hegel called “concrete universal”, but sadly Hegel swerved to pure rationality, though he did capture one valid aspect of concrete universal, which is that such peculiar universal is ever on the move. We on our part claim that “being creative” is the genuine concrete universal, both concrete and universal, both specific, individual, and personal, and spread out ubiquitous, comprehending even Mother Nature.

The chaotic and arbitrary aspects of creativity in above two sections cover the universal dimension of creativity, and the repetitive and graded aspects of creativity in the above other sections address the concrete specificity of creativity. Each dimension is pregnant with its own dying risks and rising riches, and both risks and riches are also elucidated with sensitive care above. It is thus that being creative as a concrete universal is thoroughly presented in this essay.

To clinch the whole matter of being creative, this essay in this final section stresses how necessary and indispensable creativity is to our very living daily, personal, and ordinary, and urges all of us to turn the risks of being creative into its exciting riches, and stresses to boot how such turning is itself part and parcel of being creative quite dynamic. Being creative is thus ever comprehensive and universal, on one hand, while it bites into concrete specificities of each and every person, on the other.

We all wish, then, that all glories gather together in the dynamics of “being creative” truly jumping alive ubiquitous in our entire daily ongoing in Mother Nature, and concrete and personal at every moment of each of us living on and on. It is also thus that being creative constantly presses forward in sheer novelty forever fresh, afresh. All this creativity prevails and pervades personally in Mother Nature, all overwhelmingly joyous, and all thriving symbiotically one with another. After all, to create is to grow―together. To “create” is to grow, together, as the word “create” is related to “concrescence” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 2008) . Togetherness is the secret essence of the dynamics of “being creative”.

It is time to conclude, as follows. This section has finalized this essay by considering, among others, “being creative” as sheer joy concrete and universal, pervading everywhere, including disastrous devastations, and turns things, even disasters, into novelties unimaginable undreamed of. This turning is a revolution. Being creative is joy of revolution. How can revolution so messy be joy so novel? But such is what being creative is, as revolutionary as it is joy so concrete so universal.

Being creative is revolution toward joy, unbelievable as it is. And as such, being creative is part and parcel of being human. Without creativity we are reduced to subhuman animals. We ourselves, who are turning joyously all things into sheer novelties, are “being creative” again and again. It is how we live on, one day after another, world without end, “being creative”, ever. Being creative is significant as we are we, and so this essay is significant as our living itself is significant.

Cite this paper

Kuang-Ming Wu, (2016) Being Creative. Open Journal of Philosophy,06,239-246. doi: 10.4236/ojpp.2016.63022

References