One of the things we ask ourselves as creatives is: does our art matter? To answer that question I have a story. Many times a year I go visit my mother in Vermont and, after I have done chores for her, we go out and do something fun. She wanted to go to her new favorite restaurant in Waterbury. As we waited for our meals and chitchatted I folded up tiny paper cranes made out of the paper napkin rings. Origami is something I put some energy into learning over the years. I’ve made millions of paper cranes out of random scraps of paper, candy wrappers, and even traditional origami paper over the years. I didn’t really put too much meaning into something that comes so simply to me now. I left the tiny brown paper cranes on the table when we left.
A year later we made the same pilgrimage to the same restaurant while I was visiting my mom. Again as we talked I folded cranes just as I had the first time. The waitress got extremely excited to see the little crane on the table. She exclaimed “ OH MY GOD, you are the Paper Crane Man!” She told me how the staff had been calling me that in the kitchen ever since I had left the tiny paper cranes the previous year. The kitchen staff had saved the little paper cranes and put them up on a shelf so they could look at them and enjoy. She told me how happy they made her and her staff.
As a creative we don’t always see the meaning or effect our art has for people. I know that making the little cranes relaxes me so I value it for that. It is not going to get me into a gallery for my high and original art. I am not going to have throngs of people worshiping my ability to make paper cranes but, in this case, it brought joy to people I didn’t even know. Tiny paper cranes inspired a story and was valued by a small group of cooks and servers. So depending on the point of view our art paradoxically matters and doesn’t matter. In spite of this paradox we continue to create, not for accolades but for the love of simply creating.
