Life is Creativity

The Creative Fire rages through the epochs. Evolution is creativity at work. The arthropods adapted to land, creating new forms for an environment so different from the ocean – the first fish grew a brain, creating intelligence and memory – gorgonops grew long sabre teeth and created a weapon – the earth endlessly recreates itself, and creativity burns ever brighter in the survivirs that asapt to the changing conditions.

When humankind came along, this creative fire found a way to do something unprecedented. It found a host that could make and shape – first stone tools and weapons, for purely practical purposes. Hunters needed tooth and claw to compete. But as these rough hands chipped stone against stone, something happened to these simple tools. They became beautiful.

Neanderthal man learned to speak, laugh and wonder. He buried his dead with compassion, he cared for the sick and wounded, and toward the very end of this species’ brief blaze, there was a glimmering of art. Perhaps it was the influence of Home Sapiens, already on that road – or perhaps, had the Neanderthals survived, they too, would have discovered creativity in their humanity.

but it was Homo sapiens who put the paint on the cave walls, who caught beauty as it passed and transferred it to art. The creative fire that drove life on to create new species to replace the extinguished, burned now in humans very much like us. But it had no practical purpose, like the stone tools. It existed only for its own sake – perhaps life does, too.

The need to create is deep within us, in our cells, in our genes. It comes from the dawn of time into our hearts and hands. It is truly the meaning of life – creation for its own sake, the very essence of being alive.

Without it, there never could have been any life.