Permission Granted.

At the suggestion of a colleague and friend I picked up Elizabeth Gilbert's (woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love) book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear.  I agreed with Elizabeth's thoughts so fiercely I actually found myself saying "Yes.  Yes.  Yes!" out loud to absolutely no one in my car as I listened to the audio book on my commute.  The girl crush was almost immediate.  I have a tendency to give an overly detailed Cliffs Notes version of books, but not today and this post will be no exception.  I can't help myself.  This book is, as the title would lead you to believe...magic.

Elizabeth discusses the various aspects of how to live an intensely creative life.  She argues that every one of us is inherently creative, so much so that calling someone a 'creative person' is actually redundant.  After all, we human beings were creating art before we mastered agriculture (like way before), which says we found creating useless but beautiful objects more important than feeding ourselves since the very dawn of man.

We were making this back when our food was just as likely to eat us as we were to eat it.

This idea of making stuff, any stuff, and how the making of that stuff contributes to our lives, our health, and (at risk of sounding dramatic) our world is really incredible when you think about it.  Creating anything - a beautiful meal, a painting, a piece of furniture, a piece of music, or a new vaccine benefits the creator just as much as the audience.  It feels good for a bunch of reasons.  It feels good because:

• Creating this thing is what our soul is calling us to do.
• We enjoy the process.
• We will ultimately have something to give, to share.
• We are bringing an idea to life.

But here's something I had never considered...

It feels good because we don't need to ask permission.  

If you want to create something you can just go ahead and create it.  You don't have to ask anyone if it is okay with them.  You don't have to fill out a form.  We can decide to create something and start right away.

No permission required.    

It had never occurred to me that this is one of the main reasons I enjoy creating just about anything so much.  It's why I like to cook, to garden, to write, to make useless signs on old pieces of salvaged barn boards.  No one is going to tell me that I can't take an old piece of wood and paint words on it.  I can.  And I can do it right this very minute if I please.  

It's why I like the work I do for my little town on the Garden and Beautification Committee.  Want to plant some flowers for spring?  Go right ahead, nobody else wants to!  Want to put checkered ribbon on the wreaths this year instead of the plain red ribbon we used last Christmas?  Knock yourself out!  

...and I don't have to ask a single person if it's okay. 

Maybe a different example.  If I want to pay a professional to paint my kitchen I might want to cross check that decision with my husband and our bank account.  HOWEVER, if I decide on say a Saturday night when my husband is out of town to paint our entire kitchen chartreuse while drinking a bottle of wine...well, I did can do just that.  I don't even need to ask anyone if they think the color is okay...which it absolutely wasn't.  Three different times.

This was the color I chose.  When I say it was bad I mean it was bad.

The point here isn't my uncanny knack for picking shades of green that resemble an indoor rain forest.  The point is that life full of rules and reasons to ask permission.  This life insists we stand in line, fill out all the paperwork, read the directions on the sign, follow the instructions carefully and make sure the postage is correct.  But then we have this whole other life available to us, a life that asks absolutely nothing but to come alive.  Our ideas, our creativity belong to us and only us and no one can tell us how they should look or how it should be done.    

The things we create are the way we decorate our life, they are the color on our canvas and the beauty we bring to our existence.  The stuff we make (whether you can touch it or not) is evidence of our time here, and we owe it to ourselves and to each other to bring it forth.  Because these ideas and creations are ultimately the gifts we have to give, and maybe we can decorate someone else's life...without even knowing it.

And besides, creating is fun.  It's exciting and unpredictable and downright exhilarating at times.  But best of all?  You don't need permission.

So go on and decorate your life with something beautiful friends.

xo - juli