Fear

Have you noticed when you are around a very small child and you are both drawing, that the child doesn't care that you can draw a superior cat? A more life-like horse? A person with a single nose and two hands with fingers? Your average three year old just keeps drawing their own stick figure or colors over yours with a purple crayon.

And have you noticed that when a child is playing (loudly) a tune on the piano, say, he or she doesn't care that you can actually make a recognizable tune, a tune that doesn't make people gnash their teeth? They wait impatiently for you to stop, and then go right on with a minor chord extravaganza that will cause most adults to knock back a slug of something high octane.

Two examples that I thought about this weekend while I was with four year old Carmen. And because I've been thinking lately about fear, it all kind of coalesced in my brain.

Why is it that creation--for most adults--is so fraught with fear?

Pretend you are drawing and a better artist sits down with you. They pick up a pen and while you draw a flower, they draw a flower and theirs is good enough to frame and not just because you love them and want to encourage them. I mean frame and hang on a wall, not on the refrigerator door.

Do you ignore their efforts and keep on drawing your own little spindly flower-thing? Do you take a purple crayon and scribble over theirs? Or do you self consciously stop drawing and murmur words of praise and feeling inferior, put your hand casually over your flower to hide it?

Pretend you are playing chop-sticks on the piano and someone comes in, waits until you are finished, sits down beside you and plays flawless Beethoven. Do you nudge them out of the way? Do you play chop-sticks way up on the treble section and bang louder to drown them out? Or do you sit with your hands in your lap?

When do we begin to bow to superior creative ability? When is the joy of creating surpassed by the feeling we don't measure up?

I think fear plays a bigger part in writing than most of us think it does. And I think there are two major kinds of fear that come into play:
Fear of Failing
Fear of Succeeding

I don't think children, young children, worry about failing. They haven't yet learned the definition. Creating is individual and has merit of its own. And why would their creation have to compete with some else's? Who would think of such a thing?

I also don't think young children worry about getting things right. If they do, and someone says, "Wow," they smile. They don't immediately project future expectations they can't meet and ultimate failure upon themselves.

I told Carmen a story I made up awhile back. It was a nice story with a beginning, a middle and an end. It had pathos, tension, dark moments and an uplifting ending. And it made sense.

She politely listened to it. Then it was her turn to tell a story. Hers involved the My Little Pony characters, a tea party on a cloud, something about a rainbow and a crocodile. It went on and on and on and on…It made no sense. The ending left many unanswered questions: how did the crocodile get up on the clouds with the unicorns? Stuff like that. She was pleased to death with her story. She beamed.

I think we may all need to nurture the child inside of us. Remember that our inner child isn’t a naive imbecile--she is our pure spirit, without the wear and tear of adult expectation and disappointment.

Give her a break.