One Apple A Day #25
Creativity and ego cannot go together.
If you free yourself from the comparing and jealous mind, your creativity opens up endlessly.
Just as water springs from a fountain, creativity springs from every moment.
You must not be your own obstacle.
— Jeong Kwang, Buddhist nun and chef
I spotted these words in a episode of “Chef’s table” that my girlfriend was watching yesterday. It’s a series on Netflix telling the stories of some of the greatest chefs in the world. Kwang doesn’t own or work in a restaurant. She’s a Buddhist monk and she prepares her food in the monastery where she lives, in South Korea.
Watching her while she prepares her recipes is hypnotic. Her hands, her whole body dancing over the pans and the dishes. But what really struck me was her words.
The idea that you must let go of your ego to experience real and profound creativity. I’ve been thinking about this concept. Is our ego really affecting our creativity? How? Is there a way to get it out of the way?
Ego can affect our creativity for two reasons. One is its fragility. It sounds strange considering that often our ego it’s what make us look strong from the outside. But any crack in our ego is painful. This is why we protect it, we build wall. The problem is that what we build to protect our ego from outside dangers is also caging our inner creativity. A friends once told me that fear is the opposite of love. And creativity comes from a place of love. If we are worry for our ego we can’t fully love, we can’t express our creativity.
The other reason is that ego is fed by competition. To understand our value we compare ourself with others. When the competition becomes our driving force we are not acting freely. We submit our creativity to our desire to win. To our willing to prevail on our competitors.
We often are our own obstacle on the way to creativity. This is another thing we can learn observing kids. Their ego is not developed yet so their creativity can fully express itself.