The downside of being happy: creativity kindled by sadness
My own experience led me to a slightly different conclusion.<p>I'm considered to be "creative" by my peers as I enjoy the arts and applying them for practical use. Contrary to the article, I found that I was significantly <i>less</i> creative when I was depressed. What was extremely frustrating was that it all felt 'stuck' - you can imagine a composer letting out his black-hole reservoir of pain and sadness in a stream of intense, out-of-world music, a cry for the greater ... but sadly for me it was less romantic. I just got stuck. Unable to speak properly, unable to write or draw or express <i>anything</i> for that matter. And yet it felt like I was ready to explode.<p>Now that I've recovered and drawn a line to separate those demons, I can get intellectual. One consequence of depression is too much noise; of bad chattering and self cruelty and <i>emptiness</i>. Emptiness can also be crushing. That could explain why I couldn't be 'creative' at all.<p>On the other hand, the author of the article mentioned a very good point:<p><i>>>Negative emotions appeared when they fell on hard times financially, when their health became poor or especially when a close relative died.</i><p>But I interpret this slightly differently. Poverty gives pain but I don't think this is the part that gives rise to creativity. I grew up in a very rural area where there was nothing interesting to do like video games and cinemas. That was when I was at my most creative <i>and</i> proactive, like using poor materials to make something really awesome and crazy. I prefer to call this "resourcefulness" but thinking about it now, maybe that <i>is</i> what creativity is all about: the ability to transform something deemed to be poor or average into another thing that is so much more than the sum of its parts. It's a weird irony that when my family moved to a "richer" environment, I found myself hopelessly stuck. Here are the things all laid out for me to draw and model. Here are the information to do this and that. Here's an infinite supply of paper. What a joykiller.