Give yourself permission to be creative
-
0:01 - 0:05I was hoping today to talk
a little bit about creativity. -
0:05 - 0:07You know, a lot of people really struggle
-
0:07 - 0:10to give themselves
permission to be creative. -
0:10 - 0:11And reasonably so.
-
0:11 - 0:14I mean, we're all a little suspect
of our own talent. -
0:14 - 0:18And I remember a story
I came across in my early 20s -
0:18 - 0:20that kind of meant a lot to me.
-
0:20 - 0:22I was really into Allen Ginsberg,
-
0:22 - 0:23and I was reading his poetry,
-
0:23 - 0:26and I was reading --
he did a lot of interviews -- -
0:26 - 0:30and one time, William F. Buckley
had this television program -
0:30 - 0:32called "Firing Line,"
-
0:32 - 0:36and Ginsberg went on there
and sang a Hare Krishna song -
0:36 - 0:38while playing the harmonium.
-
0:38 - 0:41And he got back to New York
to all his intelligentsia friends, -
0:41 - 0:42and they all told him,
-
0:42 - 0:45"Don't you know that everybody
thinks you're an idiot, -
0:45 - 0:47and the whole country's
making fun of you?" -
0:47 - 0:50And he said, "That's my job.
-
0:51 - 0:53I'm a poet, and I'm going
to play the fool. -
0:53 - 0:56Most people have to go
to work all day long, -
0:56 - 0:58and they come home
and they fight with their spouse, -
0:58 - 1:01and they eat, and they turn on
the old boob tube, -
1:01 - 1:03and somebody tries
to sell them something, -
1:03 - 1:04and I just screwed all that up.
-
1:04 - 1:06I went on and I sang about Krishna,
-
1:06 - 1:10and now they're sitting in bed
and going, 'Who is this stupid poet?' -
1:10 - 1:12And they can't fall asleep, right?"
-
1:12 - 1:14And that's his job as a poet.
-
1:14 - 1:16And so, I find that very liberating,
-
1:16 - 1:20because I think that most of us
really want to offer the world -
1:20 - 1:22something of quality,
-
1:22 - 1:25something that the world
will consider good or important. -
1:25 - 1:28And that's really the enemy,
-
1:28 - 1:33because it's not up to us
whether what we do is any good, -
1:33 - 1:35and if history has taught us anything,
-
1:35 - 1:38the world is an extremely
unreliable critic. -
1:38 - 1:39Right?
-
1:40 - 1:41So you have to ask yourself:
-
1:42 - 1:46Do you think human creativity matters?
-
1:47 - 1:49Well, hmm.
-
1:49 - 1:53Most people don't spend a lot of time
thinking about poetry. Right? -
1:53 - 1:54They have a life to live,
-
1:54 - 1:57and they're not really that concerned
with Allen Ginsberg's poems -
1:57 - 1:59or anybody's poems,
-
1:59 - 2:01until their father dies,
-
2:01 - 2:02they go to a funeral,
-
2:03 - 2:04you lose a child,
-
2:04 - 2:07somebody breaks your heart,
they don't love you anymore, -
2:07 - 2:08and all of a sudden,
-
2:08 - 2:12you're desperate for making sense
out of this life, -
2:12 - 2:16and, "Has anybody ever
felt this bad before? -
2:16 - 2:17How did they come out of this cloud?"
-
2:17 - 2:19Or the inverse -- something great.
-
2:19 - 2:21You meet somebody and your heart explodes.
-
2:21 - 2:24You love them so much,
you can't even see straight. -
2:24 - 2:25You know, you're dizzy.
-
2:25 - 2:28"Did anybody feel like this before?
What is happening to me?" -
2:28 - 2:33And that's when art's not a luxury,
it's actually sustenance. -
2:33 - 2:34We need it.
-
2:34 - 2:36OK. Well, what is it?
-
2:36 - 2:42Human creativity
is nature manifest in us. -
2:42 - 2:44We look at the, oh ...
-
2:46 - 2:47the aurora borealis. Right?
-
2:47 - 2:50I did this movie called
"White Fang" when I was a kid, -
2:50 - 2:51and we shot up in Alaska,
-
2:51 - 2:52and you go out at night
-
2:52 - 2:55and the sky was like rippling
with purple and pink and white, -
2:55 - 2:58and it's the most beautiful
thing I ever saw. -
2:58 - 3:00It really looked like the sky was playing.
-
3:00 - 3:01Beautiful.
-
3:01 - 3:03You go to Grand Canyon at sundown.
-
3:03 - 3:04It's beautiful.
-
3:04 - 3:05We know that's beautiful.
-
3:05 - 3:07But fall in love?
-
3:07 - 3:08Your lover's pretty beautiful.
-
3:08 - 3:10I have four kids.
-
3:10 - 3:11Watching them play?
-
3:11 - 3:14Watching them pretend to be a butterfly
-
3:14 - 3:16or run around the house
and doing anything, -
3:16 - 3:18it's so beautiful.
-
3:18 - 3:22And I believe that we are here
on this star in space -
3:22 - 3:25to try to help one another. Right?
-
3:25 - 3:27And first we have to survive,
-
3:27 - 3:29and then we have to thrive.
-
3:29 - 3:32And to thrive, to express ourselves,
-
3:32 - 3:35alright, well, here's the rub:
we have to know ourselves. -
3:35 - 3:36What do you love?
-
3:37 - 3:39And if you get close to what you love,
-
3:39 - 3:41who you are is revealed to you,
-
3:41 - 3:43and it expands.
-
3:43 - 3:44For me, it was really easy.
-
3:44 - 3:47I did my first professional play.
I was 12 years old. -
3:47 - 3:50I was in a play called "Saint Joan"
by George Bernard Shaw -
3:50 - 3:51at the McCarter Theatre,
-
3:51 - 3:53and -- boom! -- I was in love.
-
3:54 - 3:56My world just expanded.
-
3:56 - 3:58And that profession --
I'm almost 50 now -- -
3:59 - 4:01that profession has never stopped
giving back to me, -
4:01 - 4:03and it gives back more and more,
-
4:03 - 4:06mostly, strangely,
-
4:06 - 4:08through the characters that I've played.
-
4:08 - 4:11I've played cops, I've played criminals,
-
4:11 - 4:14I've played priests, I've played sinners,
-
4:14 - 4:18and the magic of this over a lifetime,
over 30 years of doing this, -
4:18 - 4:21is that you start to see
that my experiences, -
4:21 - 4:25me, Ethan, is not nearly as unique
-
4:25 - 4:26as I thought.
-
4:26 - 4:29I have so much in common
with all these people. -
4:29 - 4:32And so they have something
in common with me. -
4:32 - 4:37You start to see
how connected we all are. -
4:37 - 4:40My great-grandmother,
Della Hall Walker Green, -
4:40 - 4:42on her deathbed,
-
4:42 - 4:46she wrote this little biography
in the hospital, -
4:46 - 4:49and it was only about 36 pages long,
-
4:49 - 4:52and she spent about five pages
-
4:52 - 4:55on the one time
she did costumes for a play. -
4:55 - 4:58Her first husband got, like, a paragraph.
-
4:58 - 5:03Cotton farming, of which
she did for 50 years, gets a mention. -
5:03 - 5:06Five pages on doing these costumes.
-
5:06 - 5:10And I look -- my mom gave me
one of her quilts that she made, -
5:10 - 5:11and you can feel it.
-
5:11 - 5:13She was expressing herself,
-
5:13 - 5:15and it has a power that's real.
-
5:15 - 5:19I remember my stepbrother and I
went to go see "Top Gun," -
5:19 - 5:20whatever year that came out.
-
5:20 - 5:24And I remember we walked out of the mall,
it was, like, blazing hot, -
5:24 - 5:25I just looked at him,
-
5:25 - 5:29and we both felt that movie
just like a calling from God. -
5:29 - 5:30You know? Just ...
-
5:31 - 5:32But completely differently.
-
5:32 - 5:33Like, I wanted to be an actor.
-
5:33 - 5:36I was like, I've got to make something
that makes people feel. -
5:36 - 5:38I just want to be a part of that.
-
5:38 - 5:40And he wanted to be in the military.
-
5:40 - 5:42That's all we ever did
was play FBI, play army man, -
5:42 - 5:45play knights, you know,
and I'd like, pose with my sword, -
5:45 - 5:46and he would build a working crossbow
-
5:46 - 5:49that you could shoot an arrow into a tree.
-
5:49 - 5:50So he joins the army.
-
5:50 - 5:52Well, he just retired
a colonel in the Green Berets. -
5:53 - 5:57He's a multidecorated combat veteran
of Afghanistan and Iraq. -
5:57 - 6:00He now teaches a sail camp
for children of fallen soldiers. -
6:00 - 6:02He gave his life to his passion.
-
6:02 - 6:05His creativity was leadership,
-
6:05 - 6:06leading others,
-
6:06 - 6:07his bravery, to help others.
-
6:07 - 6:09That was something he felt called to do,
-
6:10 - 6:12and it gave back to him.
-
6:12 - 6:14We know this -- the time
of our life is so short, -
6:14 - 6:15and how we spend it --
-
6:15 - 6:19are we spending it
doing what's important to us? -
6:19 - 6:20Most of us not.
-
6:20 - 6:22I mean, it's hard.
-
6:22 - 6:25The pull of habit is so huge,
-
6:25 - 6:27and that's what makes kids
so beautifully creative, -
6:27 - 6:29is that they don't have any habits,
-
6:29 - 6:32and they don't care
if they're any good or not, right? -
6:32 - 6:34They're not building a sandcastle going,
-
6:34 - 6:37"I think I'm going to be
a really good sandcastle builder." -
6:37 - 6:41They just throw themselves at whatever
project you put in front of them -- -
6:41 - 6:43dancing, doing a painting,
-
6:43 - 6:44building something:
-
6:44 - 6:46any opportunity they have,
-
6:46 - 6:51they try to use it to impress upon you
their individuality. -
6:51 - 6:52It's so beautiful.
-
6:53 - 6:57It's a thing that worries me sometimes
whenever you talk about creativity, -
6:57 - 7:00because it can have this kind of feel
that it's just nice, -
7:00 - 7:03you know, or it's warm
or it's something pleasant. -
7:03 - 7:04It's not.
-
7:04 - 7:06It's vital.
-
7:06 - 7:09It's the way we heal each other.
-
7:09 - 7:11In singing our song,
-
7:11 - 7:12in telling our story,
-
7:12 - 7:14in inviting you to say,
-
7:14 - 7:16"Hey, listen to me,
and I'll listen to you," -
7:16 - 7:19we're starting a dialogue.
-
7:19 - 7:22And when you do that,
this healing happens, -
7:22 - 7:23and we come out of our corners,
-
7:23 - 7:26and we start to witness
each other's common humanity. -
7:26 - 7:28We start to assert it.
-
7:28 - 7:31And when we do that,
really good things happen. -
7:31 - 7:35So, if you want to help your community,
if you want to help your family, -
7:35 - 7:36if you want to help your friends,
-
7:36 - 7:38you have to express yourself.
-
7:38 - 7:41And to express yourself,
you have to know yourself. -
7:42 - 7:43It's actually super easy.
-
7:44 - 7:46You just have to follow your love.
-
7:46 - 7:48There is no path.
-
7:49 - 7:52There's no path till you walk it,
-
7:52 - 7:54and you have to be willing
to play the fool. -
7:54 - 7:58So don't read the book
that you should read, -
7:58 - 7:59read the book you want to read.
-
7:59 - 8:03Don't listen to the music
that you used to like. -
8:03 - 8:05Take some time to listen
to some new music. -
8:05 - 8:09Take some time to talk to somebody
that you don't normally talk to. -
8:09 - 8:11I guarantee, if you do that,
-
8:11 - 8:12you will feel foolish.
-
8:13 - 8:14That's the point.
-
8:14 - 8:16Play the fool.
-
8:38 - 8:41(Plays guitar)
-
8:43 - 8:46(Sings) Well, I want to go Austin,
and I wanna stay home. -
8:47 - 8:50Invite our friends over
but still be alone. -
8:50 - 8:51Live for danger.
-
8:51 - 8:53Play it cool.
-
8:53 - 8:57Have everyone respect me
for being a fool.
- Title:
- Give yourself permission to be creative
- Speaker:
- Ethan Hawke
- Description:
-
Reflecting on moments that shaped his life, actor Ethan Hawke examines how courageous expression promotes healing and connection with one another -- and invites you to discover your own unabashed creativity. "There is no path till you walk it," he says.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 09:16
Erin Gregory edited English subtitles for Give yourself permission to be creative | ||
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Camille Martínez edited English subtitles for Give yourself permission to be creative | ||
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