When we attempt to define and categorize to make sense of things, we often end up imposing limits to make things fit. We like when there's one answer. It is easy for our brains to latch onto singular, concrete ideas, harder to consider multiple possibilities at once.
So when I started reading Creativity I loved this one chapter where the author describes characteristics of creative people. These are characteristics that we've come to think of as competing opposites, and as a result, we tend to think we can only embody one characteristic or its opposite, not both within the same person.
“Are there no traits that distinguish creative people? If I had to express in one word what makes their personalities different from others, it would be complexity.
They show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes - instead of being an ‘individual’, each of them is a ‘multitude’. These qualities are present in all of us, but usually we are trained to develop only one pole of the dialectic. We might grow up cultivating the aggressive, competitive side of our nature, and disdain or repress the nurturant, cooperative side. A creative individual is more likely to be both aggressive and cooperative, either at the same time or at different times, depending on the situation.
Having a complex personality means being able to express the full range of traits that are potentially present in the human repertoire.
1. Creative individuals have a great deal of physical energy, but they are also often quiet and at rest.
2. Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time.
3. A third paradoxical trait refers to the related combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.
4. Creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasy at one end, and a rooted sense of reality at the other.
5. Creative people seem to harbor opposite tendencies on the continuum between extroversion and introversion.
6. Creative individuals are also remarkably humble and proud at the same time.
7. Creative individuals to a certain extent escape this rigid gender role stereotyping [of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’].
8. Creative people are both traditional and conservative and at the same time rebellious and iconoclastic.
9. Creative persons are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well.
10. The openness and sensitivity of creative individuals often exposes them to suffering and pain yet also a great deal of enjoyment.”
We can end up sabotaging ourselves with limits. It's comforting to say 'this is who I am,' but it's different from saying 'this is all I am.'