No 45 - Creativity Might Be Our Last Wild Instinct

Joanne Farley-Webb
May 6, 2025
3 min read

Updated: Feb 18

There was a time when the world outside mirrored the world within—vast, unmeasured and free.

Forests sprawled without fences.

Skies stretched without end.

We played.

We dreamed.

We made things—not to prove anything, but simply because it felt good to make.

Now, much of life is manicured.

Land is managed.

Time is tracked.

We’re encouraged to be productive, polished and performative.

Even rest has a strategy.

Even joy can feel like a checkbox.

But under all that structure, beneath the notifications and expectations, something wild still stirs.

Creativity

When I talk about 'Creativity' I don't mean the kind we package or monetize. Not the content we schedule or sell. The deeper kind—the kind that whispers in dreams and hums through the hands. The kind that arrives unannounced, electric and untameable. In a world that’s domesticated almost everything, creativity might be our last wild instinct.

The Wild That Still Breathes in Us

Wildness isn’t chaos. It’s not recklessness. It’s aliveness. Organic. Earth-rooted. Moon-fed. It follows no blueprint. It speaks in symbols. It moves in spirals, not straight lines.

Creativity is part of that wilderness. It’s not something we “do”—it’s something that moves through us. It shows up when we stop forcing. It asks us to surrender certainty. It doesn’t care if it makes sense. It only wants to be felt.

We’ve been taught to treat creativity like a skill or profession.

But what if it’s something far more ancient than that?

What if it’s a biological instinct—like the urge to sing, to gather, to draw symbols on cave walls and in the dirt?

When We Were Wild

As children, we knew this truth without needing to be told. We painted the sky purple. We made people out of sticks and gods out of glitter. We didn’t ask if it was “good”—we just followed the feeling.

But we were taught to tame it.

To colour inside the lines.

To value productivity over play.

To seek approval over presence.

Creativity became something to master.

To sell.

We started asking, “Is it worth sharing?” instead of “Does it make me feel alive?”

But the wildness?

It didn’t leave.

It waits—beneath the striving.

Beneath the silence.

A Sacred Rebellion

Every time you create for no reason but your own aliveness, you are practicing a sacred kind of disobedience. You are saying no to a culture that measures worth in output. You are remembering that you are not a machine. You are remembering you are a maker, a weaver, a dreamer.

Each mark on the page. Each word whispered in the dark. Each dance done with no one watching—it all counts.

Not because it’s useful.

Not because it's a comment on culture.

But because it’s true.

A Way Back Home

Creativity is a kind of returning. Not to productivity or performance, but to your own rhythm. Your own wild pulse. The forest doesn’t rush. The moon doesn’t explain itself. The tide doesn’t care if it’s trending. Nature simply is. And when we create without agenda, we are part of that same sacred rhythm.

To create—just for the joy of it—is to remember who we were before the world told us who to be.