THE POWER OF CREATIVITY

To strive even higher, to do even better—the creative process is a desperate struggle to go beyond what we were yesterday. It is a battle against resting on our laurels, against the fear of losing what we have. It is an adventure into unknown territory. Unless we view things with our hearts, we can see nothing. But if we look at the world with a love oflife, it will reveal its beauty to us. The life and essence of art—whether it be painting, music, or dance—lies in expressing througha wellspring of emotion the universal realm of the human spirit. It is a melding of the individual and the universal. That iswhy great art reaches out beyond ethnic and national barriers to move people all over the world. The emotion generated by a workof art, be it poetry, painting, or music, may be that tangible, unquestionable feeling of a broadening of the self. It is a feeling of fullness, borne from a mysterious rhythm, a kind of flight toward the infinite, lived asa sharing, an exchange, whose source is our interior world. Art is to the spirit what bread is to the body: a necessity without which it cannot renew itself. It is important that we have the inner richness to be able to look upat the stars or the moon and compose a poem once in a while. When we open wide our minds andfix our gaze on the universe, we fixour gaze on our own life.