A Call for Creativity

In an age of instant content, real creativity has never been more rare—or more necessary.

Technology fuels change. Today, it interrupts and accelerates the world of art, music, literature, and entertainment. New trends rise by the month, sometimes by the day. But this chase for novelty isn’t new. The drive to create—to innovate—is deeply human. In each of us lies a gift: a food fusion yet untasted, a cut of cloth yet unfelt, a brushstroke yet unseen, a story yet unwritten. For many, it lies dormant, waiting to be found and shared.

I remember being twelve, writing stories with a friend. We’d act them out on the playground, while others played tag or football. Later, we gathered more friends to sketch scenes and craft backstories. We felt limitless.

As we grow up, it gets harder. What once felt playful now feels too personal, too unpolished. We call some people "creative" and others not, but often that creativity is simply undeveloped or neglected. Academic pressure builds. Careers demand our energy. The creative impulse is rationalized away. It must be weighed against usefulness, against reward.

“The creative adult is the child who survived.”  — Attributed to Ursula K. Le Guin

But how do you measure creativity? Should we? We’re told to track everything. How many likes did that post get? Did the poem go viral? Was it worth the time spent? In trying to measure creativity, we risk misunderstanding it entirely. When we fixate on results, we miss the process—the quiet wandering where we grow.

If my friend and I had stopped to ask if our stories were any good, or whether we were wasting time, would we have made anything at all?

Instead of asking how to measure creativity, maybe we should ask: how do we nurture it?

The world demands perfection. We demand it of ourselves. But without space to fail, we lose the freedom to explore. We miss the joy of discovery. Creativity isn't efficient—it's alive. Try sketching in charcoal. Smear paint. Feel how the pencil scratches paper. Learn, erase, and try again.

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”  — Maya Angelou, Conversations with Maya Angelou

We think creativity comes from within, but it's also something we inherit. The history of human imagination is all around us. In an age of endless scrolling and endless content, we must choose carefully. Read words that still ring true. Watch art that still stirs the soul. Listen to songs that still make us feel something real. Be discerning. Be demanding. Your attention is your most creative resource. Don’t give it away lightly.

Even as AI tools emerge—promising to free us from drudgery and democratize creation—we must pause. If a machine can generate a story in seconds, why should we spend hours writing one?

Because machines can mimic, but they cannot feel. They don’t ache with longing. They don’t get knocked flat from heartbreak. They don’t fail and begin again. That’s still ours.

Creativity is no longer just valuable—it’s rare. In a world of instant results, what stands out is the slow work: the poem shaped by doubt, the sketch smudged and redrawn, the essay revised late into the night.

This is the call for creativity—for young writers to dare to search for meaning. When anyone can generate words with a click, the rarest voice is the one that still risks being real.

“To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.” — E. E. Cummings, from A Poet’s Advice to Students

Creativity is resistance. A technological monolith seeks to flatten art, to remove its spirit. In that world, the act of making something true is the most radical thing you can do.

So sit with a blank page, like you once did, and begin.

Who knows what lies on the other side of trying?

"Feel how the pencil scratches paper. Learn, erase, and try again."