CREATIVENESS

COMPETITION VERSUS CREATIVENESS

“If you were to take an average person living in the United States of America, and ask him, “Who are you?” he would answer with either his name or his job or both. Similarly, he has an impression of his own success, his own wealth, his own ability, and his own desirability, which he has gained not from looking within but fromcomparing himself with those around him.

The essence of mankind is not competition; it is creativeness. In all this world there is not another you, nor has there ever been another you. Is it not ridiculous to attempt to mold yourself into a likeness of your fellows, to attempt to undo the work that God has done? For you, as an especial part of the universal intelligence, are manifested here on this earth in the form you now occupy to do work that only you can do! No matter how humble your job may seem, no matter how unprepossessing your position in life, take heart! The universe has sired no other person like you. Only you can be you.

Only you can draw upon the infinite for those divine powers that are yours.

There is a fine line of demarcation between competition and creativeness in the minds of everyone today. Yet they are black and white, complete opposites on the polar scale. Competition attempts to be like. Creativeness attempts to be unlike. Competition casts all humanity into the same mold. Creativeness makes of each man an individual counterpart of God.

Competition exists on the plane that makes you want to have a better home than Jack Smith, a better car than Jack Smith, a better job than Jack Smith. It leads you into the suffocating trap of not wanting the different but wanting the same, only better. It imposes upon you a scale of values that is not your own but belongs to a group.

Creativeness, on the other hand, is a world all your own. If you were to take brush and palette in hand right now and paint a picture in oils, the result—good, bad, or indifferent by the world’s standards—would be all your own. The finest artist living could not copy it exactly. Does not this prove there is no other you? Conformity and competition are death knells to the spirit.”

– Uell S. Andersen