TATKOP 122

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who can cope with uncertainty and those with the correct myth. 

See more in the TATKOP series.

Creative - of course you are

By Fred Shivvin

A pandemic is a lesson in living with reality. It will be a hard lesson, there will be grief and heartache.

For many across the world, the Covid-19 pandemic means financial and health insecurity. Fear of disease and death is compounded by loss of income or housing, and accompanied by unease about governments seeking only to seize more power.

For many of us in Australia right now, though, we are simply stuck at home. After the initial anxiety spike, the panic buying and the grief of ruined plans, we find ourselves facing a new reality of being in the one place, all the time, without our usual activities and distractions.

Those of us away from the 'front line' of Covid-19 have a sudden excess of time. It feels strange. 

I think this strange feeling is the lack of opportunity to consume.  

Snipped from the socials

Despite being relatively safe, having free time and a lack of opportunity to shop can pose a profound personal threat. It hits hard at our personal identity as a consumer. Some are struggling to cope, and calling for other people to put themselves at risk to allow them to buy things and services. They call it 'liberty'; I call it 'fear of facing who I am without shopping'.

But we could instead try to learn from this sense of threat to our personal identity based on what we buy.

We have a rare opportunity to reclaim our personal identity as creators. Making things is a fundamental human activity, but something few of us now do, apart from perhaps an occasional craft activity.

But, I don't just want us to reclaim this inherent aspect of our humanity. 

I want us to reclaim the concept of creativity itself.

TATKOP 121

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who look for the answer 'out there' and those who look 'in here'.

Check out all the posts in the TATKOP series by Fred Shivvin here.