Blank. . .

Ideas desert me sometimes. Words seem aimless. Enthusiasm wanes and I keep on staring at a blank canvas, a blank screen, waiting for inspiration. It is like waiting for the rain. Ideas like rain are equally unpredictable. They always catch you unaware when you are not really expecting them. When you really need them badly, they disappear. The flow ebbs and ebbs until its a trickle and then its gone. As the blank page extends its dominion of blankness to my brain, the mind struggles to focus and kick start the engines of creation. The more you try, the more it slows down.

Why does creativity dry out? What does it mean to be creative? I ponder about this often. Then I realize at times, that every time I do something creative, I give out something new from inside me, but how does that get inside me in the first place? It is through years of experience and observation. Beautiful things that I have seen and felt, people I met, people who taught me so many things that made an impression knowingly and unknowingly, made me laugh and made me cry, who have become a part of me. I have been taking in all sorts of sights, sounds, impressions, inferences and opinions which make me who I am. The creative output that comes out of me is but a small part of this beautiful pattern of memories, its a response of that pattern inside me. So I can't really claim originality!

Then I understand the reasons for this drying out. I have emptied my cup and I am trying to pour more out of it. Have I given it time to fill up? Do I take new things in as easily as I used to once ? I pass a judgment too quickly, I am too biased and opinionated unlike the old me who was impressionable and saw every little thing like he was seeing it for the first time!

Then I realize that the reason for the creative block is, the child inside me is lost. That energetic, uninhibited, innocent bundle of energy that I was for whom every day was adventure and every moment fresh, full of possibilities. Never was anything taken for granted. Not weighed down by worries of the future, nor burdened by guilts of the past.

I fully realize that I cannot go back being that child, but his attitude must survive, I must bring him back. The ability to surrender to a beautiful experience, without being judgmental, to not hold yourself back, just give in to the beauty of the moment. To live in the present moment, really living it and being open to possibilities. That is what can kick start your engines of creation when you start filling up and feel full inside and whole again.

Words and articles don't really mean anything until there is a real person behind those words.