Reconnecting to Playtime: Guidance on Creativity from Ethan Hawke
I feel on a first name basis with Ethan Hawke, who has been one of my favorite actors since Dead Poets Society. Years ago, when I worked in Manhattan’s Chelsea area, I would sometimes see Ethan walking barefoot on the sidewalk, which would make me smile all day. I adored the Before Sunrise films and found his performance as a clergyperson in First Reformed deeply moving and insightful.
The day before my husband and I dropped our son off at college, the three of us went to see Boyhood. I’d heard the film had gotten good reviews and Ethan Hawke was in it, so what more did I need to know? Our family had the movie theater all to ourselves. Filmed over a period of twelve years, the story follows a boy (Ellar Coltrane) as he ages from six to eighteen, ending on the day he goes to college. Needless to say, I was weeping copious tears by the time the movie was over.
When I first heard Ethan’s TED talk, “Give Yourself Permission to be Creative,” I knew it would be wise guidance to revisit whenever I need a creativity reset.
Here are two takeaways that particularly resonate with me in terms of how I want to live my life and the kind of person and writer I want to be.
Stop worrying so much about whether or not it’s good and reconnect to play, just for the joy of it. Ethan says,“What makes kids so beautifully creative is that they don’t have any habits, and they don’t care if they’re any good or not. They’re not building a sandcastle going ‘I think I’m going to be a really good sandcastle builder.’” I remember the concentration with which my son played with his trains and my daughter practiced her cat’s cradle. What a pleasure it was to watch them spend time doing something just because it was fun. When I was a child my friends and I would play “Just Pretend.” “Just Pretend there’s a great big storm coming and it’s going to knock down all the houses and we’re going to be stuck in this basement for a month before anyone finds us. We have two hours before the storm comes. What do we need to survive? Go!”
I’m so grateful there was a time in my life when I didn’t worry about skillbuilding or succeeding or improving or producing or what judgments other people would make about me or my work. Or what judgments I would make about myself and my work. I never judged myself when I was playing, “Just Pretend.” Disaster’s about to strike fantasies were pure fun.
I want to find my way back to that creative play space. It was so life-giving.
2. Creativity heals, so express yourself by following what you love. Ethan expresses the concern that people think about being creative as something “nice” or “pleasant” rather than something vital, something essential to personal and communal healing. “If you want to help your community, if you want to help your family, if you want to help your friends, you have to express yourself, and to express yourself, you have to know yourself. It’s actually super easy. You just have to follow your love.
I don’t know about “super easy.” I expect that many people find both self-knowledge and self-expression challenging to achieve. I know I do. That’s why so many people are in therapy and doing other forms of awareness-building, and looking at their childhood and family systems and traumas, and all of that is important work.
But so is this idea of keying in on what we love and figuring out what that tells us about ourselves. Where do we find joy? What’s our happy place? What is it that we’re in the midst of doing or talking about when someone tells us, “You know your face just lit up”? We need to pay attention to that. Because it’s a gift.
I agree with Ethan that it isn’t just nice or pleasant when people are able to express themselves. It’s vital. It makes a real difference to the individual and to their community.
Here’s a personal example. Writing stories is something I’ve done most of my life, but keeping a journal is something I’ve done since I first learned to write. I fill blank or lined notebooks with what I’ve been doing or thinking and after I write, I feel better. I don’t know why it works that way and I don’t need to know. Even if I wasn’t feeling particularly bad before, I feel better. And if I was feeling terrible before, I feel a little less terrible after I write in my journal. Part of how I figure out what I’m feeling about something is by writing about it. This is one way that I get to know myself.
I don’t write every day, maybe once a week or so. But if my life becomes so hectic with other things that I don’t have time to write in my journal for weeks on end, something awful happens. I turn into a Monster. I mean that literally. I do not behave like the kind of person, wife, mother, neighbor, colleague, friend, etc. that I want to be. I don’t know myself. I lose touch with who I am. That act of writing, that self-expression, is so grounding for me, that it makes an enormous difference in terms of the energy that I put out into the world.
Do I consider journal writing play time? Not really. It’s cathartic but not necessarily fun. Writing stories, on the other hand, is fun. That turns out to be a grown-up version of “Just Pretend.”
I really believe that one part of what we’re “supposed to be” doing here in this world is expressing ourselves creatively, and another part of what we’re “supposed to be doing” is having fun. So I’m going to spend some time this month writing in my journal and some time playing “Just Pretend” with my novel. I hope that you find some time to express yourself and also time to do something that you love and that brings you joy.