Renegade Yogi

What Bruce Lee knew and that other guy didn’t

People put a lot of emphasis on the playfulness and sponteneity of creativity. And while it is an important part of expressing yourself, playfulness is not the most important part.

What set Bruce Lee apart from other martial artists? What set Pablo Picasso apart? What set Lance Armstrong apart? Was it that they had some hyper-exuberant desire to play, to break rules, to skirt the edges?

I would argue that, no, they didn’t have any more of that than most people. What they did was practice. Bruce Lee worked hours each day to perfect his body and his moves. Picasso painted study after study of the same scene. Lance Armstrong jumped on his bike every day, early in the morning, and wouldn’t return until night time. They all worked harder (and smarter) than anyone else.

This is how they managed to express themselves more fully.

You see, there is something pleasurable and enjoyable about drills. About repetition. About perfecting skills. And this part is totally left out of the common notion of creativity. Creativity is seen as effortless and innate.

Perfection is not an end, it is a process. Continually refining yourself, pushing yourself, and redefining yourself. This is what truly creative people do. Jackson Pollock did not indulge his urge to splatter. He splattered and splattered until he mastered splattering. Then he made something worth splattering about.

For instance, there’s a creativity course I saw the other day. It had a picture of an older woman smearing fingerpaint all over a paper. She was smiling and looking happy. I suppose, in some fundamental way, that some people need to be reeducated to believe that they can create something. That they can return to the primal creative urge they felt as a child, where it was just fun to see swaths of color spread under your own hands.

It’s fun, but you’re going to need to do a lot of fingerpainting to produce anything you’re proud of. Drawing and redrawing. Starting over. Editing. Revising. Trying different amount of blue. Maybe more green. Over and over again. Until you have mastered blue and green. Until you can do things with blue and green that seem like magic. Things that look impossible. That make people stare. Then you’re being creative.