One Question That Will Change How You Create Forever
- Kate Pejman
- Mar 7
- 2 min read
"Unused creativity is not benign. It metastasizes. It turns into grief, rage, sorrow, and shame."
– Brené Brown
It's not that I don't follow celebrity culture or watch their lavish lives on TV. I just don’t relate. I don’t have a personal chef crafting organic nectars in my fridge. I don’t own a bee-hive colony in my backyard. And I certainly don’t get side-body abdominal massages to sculpt my waist (if you don’t know what that is, welcome to the club!).
But when I watched Jennifer Lopez’s visual album This Is Me… Now: A Love Story, I was floored. The colours, the choreography, the music, the poetry of movement—it wasn’t just entertainment; it was creation in its purest form. It carried in it, the power to awaken my deepest yearnings.
I watched it three times in less than 24 hours.
And then I saw the reviews.
Brutal. Dismissive. Almost every critique reduced her work to a footnote in the endless saga of “Ben and J.Lo.” The art itself—the very thing she spent years crafting—was overlooked, buried beneath gossip and cynicism.
And I thought, If even this isn’t good enough, then what is? If a woman at the height of her craft, with all the resources to make something breathtaking, can have her creation discarded so carelessly, what does that mean for the rest of us?
Why create at all, when the world will only pick apart what we offer? Why write the book, paint the canvas, compose the song, build the life we imagine, when judgment will always be waiting on the other side?
And yet, the real question is far bigger than that.
What is the cost of not creating?
Months later, in an interview, J.Lo was asked why she made the album. Her response was simple:
“So that I could be proud of myself.”
Not for the applause. Not for the critics. Not for the numbers or the validation. But for the quiet, deeply personal satisfaction of knowing she honoured her own vision.
There is something profound in that.
Because in the end, the voices of others will rise and fall like waves. But the voice inside—the one that asks, Will I be proud of myself if I do this?—is the only one that stays.
May everything you do today, tomorrow, this week, or this weekend, fill you with the quiet joy of knowing you've honoured the truest parts of yourself, leaving you deeply proud of who you are.
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