How Creative Expression Helps Nurture Spiritual Meaning

Finding and making meaning is especially crucial for creative people

The photo is collage artist Alexis Smith, who comments:

“I have a way to talk about whatever I want. And that’s more meaningful to me than whether people like my work or I make a lot of money.”

From the post: Making Meaning in Art: Alexis Smith, Eric Maisel.

Meaning is another of the “big topics” touched on in my book “Developing Multiple Talents.”

Like passion, meaning is another central element in how we choose which of our creative interests, abilities or talents to develop and express.

Or choose not to: If it isn’t meaningful in some way to use a talent, why bother?

Well, maybe if you get paid a lot for doing it. But does that really satisfy our needs for spiritual meaning? Probably not.

Finding and making meaning is especially crucial for creative people, and one of the potential consequences of insufficient meaning in our lives and work is depression.

Psychologist and creativity coach Eric Maisel points out that the ongoing search for meaning and the task of meaning-making “is work, but it is the loving work of self-creation. It is the choice we make about how we intend to live our life.”

And in his book The Van Gogh Blues: A Creative Person’s Path Through Depression, Maisel notes,

“Creators have trouble maintaining meaning. Creating is one of the ways they endeavor to maintain meaning. In the act of creation, they lay a veneer of meaning over meaninglessness and sometimes produce work that helps others maintain meaning.”

He warns: “Not creating is depressing because creators are not making meaning when they are not creating.“