Creating a Better World

Many years ago, while an undergraduate student, a senseless robbery occurred in our small college town. A fellow student, who was a young father, was gunned down as he was taking a deposit to the bank for his employer. I remember the shock on the campus that such a senseless crime had occurred. What I remember even more was the words of our university president as he addressed the student body the next day. He said, “There are two kinds of people in this world, those who create and those who destroy.” He then admonished us to always be the kind of people who create.

Over the years, as I have been a keen observer of human nature, I have found these words to continue to ring true. There are only two kinds of people, those who create and those who destroy. It is impossible to do both at the same time. Whether I have been working in the business world, developing family relationships or writing a story, I know that you cannot create and destroy at the same time. The two great powers that control this universe remain two separate and distinct entities, the Creator and the Destroyer.

This past week, I have continued to immerse myself in the world of art as I read and study great artists of the past, as I view videos on African Dance and as I struggle to capture the beauty that surrounds me at this time of year through word, paint and photography. In the middle of all this, as part of my studies, I was asked to view the movie, Hotel Rwanda. This movie vividly depicts the Rwandan genocide of 1994. As I contemplated the relationship between African dance and the atrocities committed in Rwanda and throughout the world, I once again heard the words “you cannot create and destroy at the same time.” When a country is building, growing, developing it is not killing off its most valuable resource. Likewise, when a person is building, growing, developing, and creating there is little time left for backbiting, criticizing, undermining, and other activities that destroy our spirit or those around us.

Ellen Dissanyke in What is Art For lists several reasons that we create. She says,

1) Art can restore significance, value, integrity and sensuality and the emotional power of things.
2) Art exercises and trains our perceptions of reality.
3) Art echoes or reflects the natural world.
4) Art is therapeutic. It integrates powerful, contradictory and disturbing feelings.
5) Art gives order to the world.
6) Art arouses sympathy or fellow feelings among people.

Finally, Ms. Dissanyke says, “Art provides a sense of meaning or significance or intensity to human life that cannot be gained in any other way. Persons who feel assured of this meaning are more likely to accept the periods when there are difficulties and problems in life.”

Who knew there was so much power in a box of crayons!!