Strive to Belong to the Community of Creators

Where joy is, creation has been. — Henri Bergson

While skimming through my favorite old philosophy textbook, I had the pleasure of discovering these comments in the book’s preface:

There are great multitudes of good and decent people out there in the world who belong to the category of creators rather than destroyers. But they are not the ones who are most visible or most audible, not the ones who talk mindlessly and endlessly on television, not the ones who have a judgmental reaction to everything that differs from their way of seeing. They make up a beautiful though silent community. But they are there.

While my wife, Lori, and I were lunching in a restaurant one day, she said to me, “How can you not feel alive if you are creating?” And Bergson once wrote, “Where joy is, creation has been.” This may be, for many of us, as near the answer to the meaning of life as we will find in this life. You’re alive as long as you’re creating. Ray Bradbury insists that it matters not what happens in the world; your moral obligation is keep on creating. It is the greatest of privileges to strive to belong to the community of creators.

Ask yourself, Do you strive to be a member of the Community of Creators? I would like to think I do, even if my membership is in need of constant renewal.