Creativity and Connection

From the Tarot of the Absurd, the Empress; from the Post-psychedelic Cyberpunk, the Lovers:

There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.

—Edward de Bono

I had a good chuckle with this pair of cards - talk about cause and effect! But what if I told you the Empress wasn't a baby-making factory? What if her children were named music, dance, painting, and gardening? Somewhere along the line, things for practical uses became part of our cultural heritage, used to create beauty, feeling, and relationship. What a boring life this would be without these pleasures. The Lovers represents connection, and as Steve Jobs stated, "Creativity is just connecting things." Our imagination is fed by curiosity, through people, places and things. We synthesize and recombine them, making connections between what was previously unrelated. It's no surprise that Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way suggests a day to explore and pay attention: "a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist."