Welcome to part seven of an ongoing series based on my book, The Endless Creative.

If you’re just tuning in, I recommend starting at part one.

Tension

You’ve probably heard the term creative tension before, but what does it really mean? In an article on the subject, Cath Duncan describes it this way, “Creative tension is essentially a structure that helps to facilitate creativity and change.”

Tension leads to change, and the more tension there is, the greater the likelihood is that a change will occur. Imagine two poles with a rubber band connecting them. The bigger the gap between those two, the greater the tension. To resolve this tension, the poles must either come back together or the band will break. 

Creative tension occurs when there is a difference between the thing you want (your dream) and where you are now (your reality).

 To look at it another way: creative tension builds when you embrace the challenge of creativity, when you do something different from the norm. The phrase “go against the flow” describes it well. Think of a fish not only swimming against the movement of water, but also against all the other fish who are following the water’s course. That little guy (or girl, I can never tell with fish) is bound to get bumped up and knocked around by all the other fish. This is how tension can feel, and it’s a big reason why many choose to forgo creative living and instead let the tide and the crowd dictate their direction.

Tension exists on an atomic and molecular level in the form of potential energy. Potential—that’s another source of tension: when you aren’t yet what you could be. Tension is all around us, and it’s not just necessary, it’s useful. So, if tension is so important, why do we resist it?

Here’s a difficult question: What is the opposite of creative? Think about it for a moment. Done? Oh, not yet? Go ahead, take your time…

Good? Okay, so if we look at the root word, create, its opposite is destroy. Then the opposite of creative would be destructive.

Destruction is certainly an act in direct opposition to creation, but let’s look at it another way.

If being creative means bringing about something new, then what would its opposite be? Not bringing about something new. In this sense, the opposite of creative is normative: keeping things the same or accepting sameness.

This is why I often encourage readers to “never be normal.”

The very act of being creative means standing out from the norm, not being like water, which takes the path of least resistance. It means going against the flow of normalcy. This resistance creates a drag: a natural pull to bring you back into normative living, a.k.a. creative tension.

Things that aren’t normal get noticed. As a creative, this could work in your favor or to your detriment. Most people don’t want to be thought of as the weird one. But, like it or not, creativity is weird. It’s nonstandard. It’s unusual. It’s strange.

This is what makes the pull of the well-traveled road so strong. It’s familiar, normal, and safe. Tension is the tightrope creatives must walk daily.

But if being creative is so stinking hard, how and why does anyone do it? The key is finding a healthy balance.

There is a balance—a natural center between two or more extremes—to be found in everything. When opposing forces tug against one another, with a center of gravity between them, tension happens.

We can have an unhealthy concept of balance. There is the idealistic mindset that tells us our lives will be whole when we set aside equal time for everything important to us. One little problem: this is impossible. The harder you focus on giving everything equal weight, the more frustrated you will become. Not everything has the same weight, nor should it.

Instead, think of balance as giving the most attention to the things that weigh (or matter) the most at the time, without completely neglecting everything else. Picture a scale like the one Lady Justice holds: you can have one heavy object dipping lower than the other, and balance is still maintained, but if you put too much weight on one side, or remove all the weight from the other side, everything falls. 

If we are to practice creativity and accept creative tension, we must learn healthy creative balance.

 You can’t be totally creative all the time, nor would I suggest you try. Even the most creative people still do completely normal things.

Some time ago, while I was writing this, one of my kids started complaining that their undies were too tight. I soon discovered they had put their whole body through one leg hole. They had not followed the normal way to get dressed and knew something was off.

If you did everything creatively, you would not only be mentally exhausted from constantly having to invent new methods, you’d also be a total weirdo. It’s better to eat your food one bite at a time with the proper utensils like a normal person (and not by shoveling it down the hatch with a keyboard while hanging upside down wearing a canary suit). I’d even say the majority of your life may be spent doing perfectly normal things—that’s just fine. The problem arises when you do everything normally and allow no space for the creative.

Furthermore, there is a balance between the left and right sides of our brains, between our rational, logical, structured sides and our irrational, emotional, creative sides (there’s debate about whether that is an accurate model of our brain, but the general concept still holds). Both are important and necessary. Both must be held in balance, keeping the other in check. Yet in any given activity, one will dominate.

Let me be frank (no, silly, it’s not my name)—we can’t go totally hog wild with creativity, because if we did, our lives would quickly devolve into a chaotic mess. Nor should we neglect creativity and live bland, unfulfilled lives where we never take risks or try new things.

We must strike a balance. We must discover a healthy level of creative living. This will look different for every person. The tendency is to be unbalanced in favor of normative living (the safer way). It’s time to tip the scales back. It’s time to apply the creative approach to the most important parts of our lives.

But before we do that, we’ll need to look at what it really means to be creative in the first place.