Creation

​I am amazed at the talents that people have. I recently walked through a gallery which was showing works painted by Sir Winston Churchill. In my eye, some were better than others but they were each beautiful. Later in his life he took up the hobby of painting and never considered himself any good. He painted about 500 pieces that are known. 400 or so of them are in a National Trust for the people of England. The remaining are held by family and collectors. Whether the scarcity of available works or because of who he was and what he did when he was not painting – each of the paintings shown in the gallery had a for sale sign of more than $1.5 million dollars.
I like to paint as well and like Winston, I don’t consider myself very good at it. I am proud of some of the pieces I have finished but I still am hard on myself.
Whether we consider ourselves creative people or not, we are all creators. We create, day by day, our own futures. Life is about creating and making the kind of life we want. We are unable to control every aspect of our lives and we each go through trials we would never choose if given the choice. We are, however given opportunities to step up, rise up and grow through our challenges and make something of ourselves and our lives.
“God left a world unfinished for [men and women] to work [their] skill upon,” Alan Stockdale wrote. “He left the electricity still in the cloud, the oil still in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gave to [us] the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He left the problems unsolved and the pictures unpainted and the music unsung that [we] might know the joys and glories of creation.”
I love this quote as it provides a glimpse of the value of work and the value of creating. We can each make a better world and better futures – this is our common goal.
Creating is never easy. We must take responsibility and word hard to make things happen. We have to remain positive and see the opportunities rather than only problems.
Lloyd Newell said, “With that approach to the world, almost anything is possible. We need only to put our mind and heart to the artistic work of creating our lives.” And to that I would add our families and our businesses.
What are you going to create today?