Why do we create?

On Tuesday, we watched a video of President Uchtdorf speaking about creativity.  I've included the video below if you want to watch it again. 

I love one thing in particular that he says: "The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul."  It's so true.  We are creative beings because our Father is a creative Being.  We want to make something that wasn't there before.  In that way, the internet has given us a great outlet.  Creating has become almost effortless.  We have a million ways to do it: blogs, social networking sites, YouTube, wikis, crowd sourcing, and so on.

Sometimes, however, we can throw our voice into the black hole of the internet and it just gets lost.  How many blogs have been created that no one ever looks at?  Justin Bieber was discovered on YouTube, as we talked about in class, but how many other talented people are out there whose videos just will never go viral?  Creating a blog that becomes famous or a video that eventually goes viral is about as likely as writing the next Harry Potter.  You might be good, but popularity often comes down to luck.

But maybe that doesn't matter to us creative beings.  Do we play the piano because we want to become a world-renowned concert pianist?  Or do we simply enjoy playing?  On the same line, do we upload a video of us playing piano because we want to get 1,000,000 hits?  Or do we just want to share our talents?  Do we create for attention, or just because we have this innate desire to know we accomplished something?  I think it's a little bit of both.  And sometimes maybe a selfish desire to make some money off our talent is mixed in there, too.

I've been working on writing a book for the last 8 years or so.  It's taken a long time because different things keep distracting me.  School, work, and a bit of writer's block to name a few.  Sometimes when I'm writing it I think, "Wouldn't it be awesome if this scene was in a movie?" and for a moment I wonder if this little book could actually become popular enough to someday hit the big screen like so many other well-known works.  And then I consider the myriad of literature that exists and the number of writers out there and think of the miniscule probability of actually becoming famous.  So, I wonder sometimes why I keep writing it if there is such a slim chance of getting noticed in the literary world.  Because there's this secret hope that it will sell well?  Yeah, I admit it, there is.  But also because I just want to get this idea on paper and see it and know that I actually wrote a book.

So, Internet, if there's one thing you do for us, it's give us the opportunity to participate more than we've ever done in all of history.  Anyone who has access to the internet and can read and write a fair amount can contribute, which includes more people today than it ever has.  If all we want to do is create for creation's sake, we have a great tool right at our fingertips.  And in the end, maybe the internet really is the best way to get noticed.