Of Dusty Boxes...and such

Scrambling around the other day, I stumbled upon something up high in a lofty space; a nearly forgotten space. I had grown weary of this thing some time ago and, thinking I would only put it away for perhaps a season, days rolled into weeks, weeks slipped into years and before I knew it a considerable amount of dust had accumulated there. If someone had thrown it out, I doubt many others would have missed it. Though I would have been the worse for it.

It is curious how easily we dispatch things in our life. "Outta sight, outta mind," they say. And that is true, to a certain degree. Sometimes things simply get misplaced (like recently when my wife's laptop went AWOL for nearly a week at the foot of our bed under our strewn bedspread). But there are times we intentionally put things away, hoping maybe they'll never be missed and hoping they'll simply stay gone. But when they are important things, things that matter, they have a tenacious tendency for sticking around until we deal with them.

So, after spending considerable time blowing off the worst of the dust, and then taking a damp cloth to the task (I've always been kind of a neat freak), I opened the box and much to my surprise, what I had quietly tucked away was still waiting for me, much like an old watch who's battery still hasn't given up the fight.

I guess creativity is hard to kill. It may be as resilient as life itself. We may try packing it away, or using only a small portion of it just to manage along, but creativity doesn't like to remain in lofty, dusty, forgotten spaces. Creativity will wait you out. It won't cater to your fears and insecurities forever. It will patiently wait on you until you return to it.

There are some reasons I tucked a good part of my creativity away for a while, some of which I may explore here. But for now, the two of us are looking to get reacquainted again, especially when it comes to writing. Perhaps it is best we not create because we think we have something to offer, but rather, we create because we have something we need to receive.

Here's to opening dusty boxes...