Why You Need to Stop. Then Create.

Imi Lo
3 min readMay 3, 2024

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An itch to create,

A craving for breathing room,

A lingering feeling that you’ve had enough of the daily grind.

Perhaps you have been stifled to such an extent that you’ve lost the space to breathe, let alone express yourself.

Yet undeniably, in every human heart lies a deep yearning to have a voice, make a mark, and create artifacts that echo beyond the confines of ordinary life.

Your unique expression could take many forms – cooking a meal; taking a photo; crafting an album; writing a book; developing the next computer system; formulating a new math equation; or advancing the next generation of gender theory.

Your creative expression is not just a hobby or another ‘task’ you must do. It is actually a declaration of your existence, a testament to you being the one and only you.

It starts with an idea, a vision you believe in –

It may enlighten, or it may not.

It may entertain, or it may not.

It may innovate, or it may be something already done.

But none of that truly matters.

What matters is that you have left YOUR mark in the world.

This knowledge – that you have birthed something into the world, something that might ripple out, may outlast your own life – offers profound comfort in the face of our fleeting existence.

It is a potent medicine to our existential angst.

But it is not just personally soothing. It is how we heal our collective existence, too.

When you give yourself the space to express, you are imprinting your essence on the world, a task only you can fulfill.

Because there is only one you, whatever artifact emerges when your heart and mind unite is unique.

If you had let it slip by, it would be lost forever.

Taking time away from the world, taking a pause, making time for your expression and creative endeavor is not a waste of time.

It is not ‘unproductive’, and it is certainly not selfish.

It is, in fact, one of the most generous things we can do.

Surprisingly (or does it?), getting caught up in a constant dance of codependency, where we get sucked into everyone else’s demands, judgments, shaming, and blaming, does not help humanity one bit.

Taking the plunge to walk away from the noise and demands of the outside world, we find clarity and our truth. And it is ONLY from this place that your best gift can be birthed into the world.

In fact, this inward turn does not isolate us, nor does it make us selfish. It nourishes us to become the best humans we can be, so we can heal our collective human experience.

Perhaps, we are not here just to exist but also to create, to create so we can share, declare, and maybe impact.

I am grateful for my existence.

So, every day I say to myself

“I was created, so I create.”

As long as a man had the courage to reject what society told him to do, he could live life on his own terms.

To what end ?

To be free.

But free to what end ?

To read books, to write books, to think.”

– Paul Auster

Now, dear ones.

What could you create if you stopped the routine just long enough to listen to your inner voice?

💫

https://youtu.be/GAl_t7nDq3A

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