A short talk with the Chief Creative. In about an hour, along with 74 other topics, we discussed the new furniture for the campsite restaurant, which is currently undergoing a makeover. The makeover details are complex, ranging from abrasion classes and acoustics to art, and aren’t really relevant here. What is interesting, however, is that—unintentionally, as it wasn’t even about the furniture—we eventually reached spinning heights and came up with the super-simple idea of just painting and reupholstering the existing, old-fashioned tables and chairs instead of spending a fortune on new furniture and disposing of the old. I can already see the light sage green chairs in front of me, and I know it’s right. I want to make this vision come true. I’d love to grab a sanding block right now and start on the first little chair leg.

The alternative is simply to buy new tables and chairs, the kind you see in every bakery chain. The latter involves less work; the resources of the people involved would be free for more sensible projects. It’s also generally less frustrating—you don’t have to deal with sanding dust, paint drips, and unforeseen catastrophes. It’s faster. Cleaner. The result is clear beforehand—you saw it in the furniture catalog. A safe bet. The restaurant will still look beautiful, and the guests will still be amazed.*

Which of the two options makes more sense and is more sustainable or economical is up for debate. For me, it’s certain that the former is more creative and thus both more blissful and more frustrating. Our unique furniture! Our design! And ten thousand self-created problems that a cozy trip to IKEA could have prevented.

And I ask myself again: Why the effort? What is the drive? IKEA has great chairs, and the campsite certainly won’t earn a cent more just because we upcycle tables and chairs. My current theory? First: the God complex, one’s own creation. The seed is sown in the form of a »great« idea; now you want to see it sprout and grow (don’t forget to harvest!). Second: the pursuit of perfection. This can be done better! Upcycling is better than buying new, and our homemade chairs fit the room better than those from IKEA. Or whatever. But if the creative person didn’t have some vague impression that they could do it better, they’d leave it alone, wouldn’t they? And it’s probably less about proving it to others than proving it to oneself. If I had to sum it up in one word now: Self-actualization. We are back at square one, Maslow and the hierarchy.

It sounds so selfish. What about self-transcendence, the added value for society, the contribution to the common good and the future of the world? I believe that’s part of it, without needing to be explicitly named. I have yet to encounter a creative who wanted to perfect things only for themselves personally. When I think of the new seating, I think of the CO2 and water saved in the production and transport of new goods (whether that’s true or not). I think of preserving old values, and above all, I think of a beautiful, inspiring, and simultaneously calming space where guests feel comfortable, enjoy their food and their vacation, and perhaps suddenly feel called to upcycle something themselves—thereby saving resources and discovering their own creativity. In my daydreams, every hand-painted sage green chair has the potential to turn the fate of the world for the better. Do others think the same way??

I don’t know for sure, of course, but I believe they do. Because alongside all our striving for individuation, we are one thing above all: social animals. We need belonging; we need community. Even misanthropic hermits like me. My first persona, Ann-Kathrin, paints greeting cards. Sure, on the one hand, she enjoys designing and painting them, and she’s happy with the finished cards. But let’s be honest: that’s not enough. Greeting cards are meant to be given away. She wants other people to find her cards so beautiful that they give them to others and, in turn, brighten their day. If that succeeds, her need for recognition is perhaps satisfied. Ego. At the same time, however, she has contributed to the joy of other people. Created added value.

You can take it further: If one’s own creative result finds no resonance in the world out there, self-doubt increases, and the misunderstood artist throws themselves off the bridge. Or, because of that prospect, they don’t even dare to bring their creative potential out into the world in the first place. At some point, creativity needs external validation. And that can only happen if the outside, the community, classifies the creative product as enriching. And that, in turn, can only happen if the creative creates something that, at least subjectively, creates added value for others. Light bulbs, greeting cards, the Mona Lisa, sage green chairs. We wouldn’t strive for perfection if we didn’t care about the world. That’s my claim.

While I’m typing, the first criticism of the chair-painting project already reaches me. Not unjustified. It will take an infinite amount of time that will then be missing for more important things. Always the same theme. Upcycling chairs is just starving art, making something pretty. Get these silly ideas out of your head, come back down to earth, think rationally for once. It makes me incredibly sad. If we had always rationally knocked the silly ideas out of our heads, the sun would still be revolving around the earth today.*

Where does the criticism come from? And why, when it comes to ideas, does the willingness to criticize seem so much greater than the willingness to encourage? I’ve dealt with this rather intensely in the past, after realizing how painful it has been my whole life that my whims were not taken seriously or considered important. That nobody en-couraged me to stick with my ideas and passions. That it was hard to scrape the courage together anyway.**

Attempt at an answer? Fear. Manifold forms of fear. If you encourage or even support someone and they fail … then you fail with them. If you’ve devalued the whim from the start, at least you’re left with the satisfaction of »I told you so.« One’s own fears and thoughts of lack are projected onto the creative. A blog post I wrote almost two years ago comes to mind. Back then, it wasn’t about creativity for me, but about mindset and life in general. I was reading Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead and came across Theodore Roosevelt’s speech Citizenship in a Republic, which mentions the Man in the Arena who fights and perhaps fails, perhaps triumphs. And of the timid souls of the critics in the stands who know neither victory nor defeat. (Citizenship in a Republic, 2024)

Drumroll. I’m quoting myself for the first time: »Perhaps someone simply wants to clumsily save you from an idiotic decision. In my experience, this pseudo-well-intentioned, beat-around-the-bush criticism often does exactly that: it saves you from making decisions. Whether idiotic or not doesn’t matter. The line between idiotic and brilliant is, as we know, very thin.« (Lorenz, 2022) (Cool, right?)

When the critic tells the creative—benevolently or not—to get the silly ideas out of their head, and the creative listens to this supposed voice of reason, then … creativity becomes a demon. It becomes the It. And the critic becomes the Super-Ego. The rebellious inner child against the adults. The Fool against the rest of the world. An inner contest, because no decision has been made, and a wholehearted decision is no longer possible. The creative is no longer deciding for or against their idea, for or against their concept (which doesn’t even exist yet)—with the appearance of the rational critic and their possibly logical arguments about time, resources, and relevance, the creative is deciding for or against reason and the world of adults. One’s own idea, one’s own vision is demoted to an illusion, a daydream, a castle in the air. But it continues to burn, it hurts, and henceforth haunts the creative as a demon.

Whoops, where did that outburst come from? A bit experimental, I admit. But I truly believe that creative traumas and blocks arise in such way, and one’s own creativity mutates from a divine blessing to a satanic curse. Freud might speak of forbidden drives. And that is exactly what it is when I cannot live out my creativity in the world of reason where everything is neatly divided into possible and impossible.

I may be a Fool, but I am onto something big!