Psychologist Abraham Maslow reminds us that a first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.
One of his more interesting research projects was studying the creativity level of people doing mundane work. Mundane, in this case, means people doing boring work or repetitive labor, like an assembly-line job, or job activities that seldom change, like a street sweeper. It also means people doing any job not usually associated with creativity.
He wrote, “A fair proportion of my subjects were not productive … nor did they have great talent or genius, nor were they poets, composers, inventors, artists or creative intellectuals.”
For example, he observed a woman who was uneducated and poor and yet brought unconventional creativity to her roles as a homemaker and mother. Although she had very little money to work with, her home was always beautiful, meals were banquets, and her taste was impeccable. She was in all these areas original, novel, ingenious and inventive. How could he not classify her as creative?
It reminded me of an essay in a book titled “Home” by Cleveland, Tenn., photographer Stephen Greenfield. He was kind enough to let me read a chapter about a little black lady named Queenie who was so proud of her little home that she often swept the long walkway to it. The walkway was not brick, gravel, concrete or asphalt. It was just plain dirt. I can never forget his picture of her standing straight and proud in front of her little home with that broom. The coupling of his photography with his words about Queenie moved me deeply. Queenie’s paintbrush was a broom.