We entered school with crayons in our fists and songs nobody taught us.
We drew purple trees because we felt like it.
We told stories that made no sense and all the sense in the world.
Then someone handed us a rubric.
They lined us up and measured us.
They told us to color inside the lines.
Not because it mattered, but because that’s how you get an A.
They said, “That’s not how you do it,” so many times that we stopped asking, “But why not?”
And eventually we learned that creativity was something you could fail at.
Think about that….
You can’t fail at being yourself. But we were taught that we could fail at expressing ourself.
The wound that formed wasn’t the red ink scribbled all over our worksheets.
The wound was deeper.
The wound was learning to edit our true self.
But let me pause here to say this:
What I’m about to touch on isn’t about the teachers.
Teachers have been some of the most important people in my life. And honestly, they are the most important people in the world.
My grandma was a teacher.
My mom was a teacher.
I valued many of mine as a kid.
And even as an adult I’ve loved a teacher.
I’ve seen how much heart they pour into students despite the odds.
The problem isn’t teachers. It’s the system.
A system designed to measure efficiency, not imagination.
To standardize, not to nurture.
To turn creativity into something you can pass or fail.
But now you’re grown. And nobody’s grading you anymore.
Yet you still hear the echos of that system, don’t you?
That voice that says, “Is this good enough?” before you’ve even finished.
That voice that compares your first draft to someone else’s masterpiece.
That voice that says, “Who are you to think you’re special?”
That’s not your voice…
That’s the ghost of every correction, every comparison, every time the system made you feel like your imagination needed to be tamed.
But your creativity is too ancient to be tamed.
It’s how you see. It’s how you breathe meaning into things.
School taught you that there’s a right answer.
But in art…in music…in the work that matters…
There are only true answers.
And true just means real to you.
The song that moves you might bore me. The painting I stared at for twenty minutes might leave you scratching your head.
And that’s the point.
You don’t need to be good for everyone.
You need to be honest for yourself.
In school, the assignment was to please the teacher. To get the grade. To be better than the kid sitting next to you.
But now here’s you last assignment…
The final test before you graduate.
It’s to recover what the system took from you.
That childlike audacity to make something just because it wants to exist.
Curiosity without agenda.
Delight in failure.
The joy of play.
And most importantly…
Belief in yourself.
Stay creative,
