Any artist will tell you that inspiration is vital to the “creative process," whatever that may be. Painting a mural that celebrates multiculturalism, performing an interpretative dance, or anything else that we traditionally consider to be works of art are indeed works of art. But I like to believe that works of art exist far beyond our normal perception of what is beautiful, even if we don’t know how to appreciate or understand it ourselves.
My roommate builds drones, and every day, I see him working on the next model, the next component, the next whatever. Witnessing the gradual creation of a fully functional flying machine, I only wish to understand the amount of dedication, patience, and persistence that goes into its construction. It is an art.
My friend across the hall from us codes, and every time he discovers that one pesky bug in his program, he jolts down the hall to celebrate in a state of utter bliss and relief. Line after incomprehensibly dense line; the code doesn’t lie. It finally works, and it is an art.
My friend in the adjacent dorm slams--poetry, that is. A carefully crafted composition of syllables that roll off the tongue, that elicit images and emotions, that share a set of human experiences makes the audience react. And I wonder how anyone could ever think that it wasn’t art.
Whether it's building a five-foot tall Lego-man for an engineering project, silent-dancing in the library during finals week, or writing an introspective essay or article, it’s important for people to find their niche, their “creative” outlet, that allows them to create something new and become inspired because of it. Some people call this flow, the state in which one is completely immersed in an activity and feels rewarded because of it.
My high school English teacher introduced me to the idea of flow and its relation to happiness by leading a class activity that had us frolic through the meadows and blow bubbles to help us reach this state. As strange as I thought it was back then, I now realize that it was just one way of achieving a state of flow, and though it wasn’t one that resonated with me, it reminded me that I needed to find what did resonate with me and pursue it.
It is in achieving a state of flow that I think people perform at their best and create the inspirational things that should move us the most. Whether the inspiration comes at a more gradual rate like building an aircraft model or at a more sudden sense of fulfillment like coding or like poetry somewhere in between, we can often find beauty in the most unconventional activities and aesthetics and in the most unexpected moments. We just need to be on the lookout.
