Can we be blamed for our lack of creativity in our adult lives?

“A lot of parents crush their children’s dreams. I give many lectures at universities and colleges all over the country, and always say that parents kill more dreams than anybody. They squash any artistic drive that children have when they say, “We don’t want you doing this stuff, because you can’t make money and you’ll end up being a cab driver or a waitress.”

This can be devastating. I don’t know how you recover from that if you have a great love for the arts. You’ll end up hating your parents for that, especially when you’re stuck in some dead-end job that you really hate.”

– Spike Lee, American filmmaker

Some children, like Spike Lee, are lucky. Their parents encourage their creative instincts. Their parents support their love for music, for painting, for creative writing… and give a helping hand in its development. Their parents don’t brainwash them into believing that, unless they pursue an activity or a field of study that makes money for them in the future, or sets them up for it, they’re useless.

But, as Spike Lee’s words suggest, most of us have grown up with parents who have discouraged our creative endeavours during our childhoods. “You can’t make money as an artist or a musician or a writer,” they’ve said. We’ve had to pursue engineering, medicine, law, accountancy, and more recently, business management or software engineering. For women, it’s always been teaching.

Our parents have drummed it into our heads that the only successful professions are the ones they’ve grown up with, or know of. The ones guaranteed to get us well-paying jobs and set us up in a career they approved of. The rest were for shirkers… a waste of time. Particularly the arts. All musicians, painters and writers lived in poverty and died bankrupt. Except for those born with silver spoons in their mouths (Rabindranath Tagore’s name was often mentioned here).

As children, whenever we pursued our creative instincts, our parents have told us that it’ll lead to despair. That we’ll end up being peons, taxi drivers and farm labourers. Or worse, remain unemployed and depend on handouts from friends and family.

During a discussion on this topic, a friend presented another scenario. He said, although some children were encouraged to be creative, when they grew older they found themselves in a different world. Their parents, who had encouraged them several years before, as well as their teachers at school and college, and their bosses at work, all said the same thing: “Don’t try to be creative. Just follow the rules and you’ll get there safe and sound.”

With such encouragement, can we be blamed for our lack of creativity in our adult lives?

[Citation: Spike Lee quote from Creativity: Unconventional Wisdom from 20 Accomplished Minds, edited by Herb Meyers and Richard Gerstman.]