The first thing I do when I speak to groups about creativity is make this statement: Raise your hand if you consider yourself creative. I’m still surprised when, in any given audience, only about half of the people will raise their hands. The statement brings smiles and nervous laughter. It’s always my goal to convince everyone in my audience that she or he is most certainly creative. Sometimes you just have to look for it.

My mom told me about a story in southeastern Wisconsin where creativity brought a boatload of ear-to-ear smiles. It started with a bus driver who simply loved to crochet. One day one of the kids on the bus bet her that she couldn’t crochet a taco. She told him she could. He told her to prove it. So she did. She created a crocheted taco for him. When she presented him the taco I’m sure there were smiles all around.

Pretty soon all the kids wanted a crocheted gift. So the bus driver went to work. She asked every child what they wanted and she produced it for them. Get a load of this quote from the bus driver:

I get joy out of seeing them smile…So when I would finish it and they’d come around every morning and see how progressed I got on their little creature or whatever they got, and when that was done, I would set it on my dashboard when I got to the stop, and they would see it and be smiling all day with it and they would take it into the school and they’d still have a smile on their face when they came back out.

Do you think that bus driver was always good at crocheting? Probably not. Was she ever a beginner? Of course she was. There may have even been a time when she would have told you she wasn’t creative. But she kept working on it. She practiced while she waited for her little bus riders to get out of school. She took a hobby and created something that brought smiles to all kinds of little faces.

Now you might protest and say she was already creative. But if you think about it, all it takes to learn to crochet is a little practice. Hook yarn, thread it through, and count. Pretty much anyone can do it if they set their mind to it. Once you learn to do the simple things you can learn to do that which is more complicated. Before you know it, you might even be creating a crocheted taco.

You are creative. Yes, you. Whatever hobby it is that you have you can use it to bring joy and smiles to others. That’s what art is. It’s something you create that changes both the artist and the recipient for the better.

What will you create today that will give joy to another person?

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