Elizabeth Gilbert defines the "creative life" as a life lived following our curiosity without giving in to our fear. It does not mean working as a professional artist, or dedicating yourself body and soul to the artistic experience. It is something more generic, a way of life based on the freedom to express one's hidden treasures. In fact, each of us has hidden treasures within. The difference between living an ordinary life and a creative one, is having the courage to seek these treasures out. Having courage, however, does not mean not being afraid – which might be considered reckless – but facing something that scares us with full knowledge of the facts.
The fear of living a creative life can manifest itself in so many different ways. For example, you may be afraid of not having any talent, or of having ridiculous expectations, or that someone might steal whatever creative idea you come up with, so you think it is better to keep it hidden. You may also worry that you won't be taken seriously, or that you're too old to start – or too young. Creativity and fear are two sides of the same coin. Indeed, fear is stimulated by a creative life because creating means entering the world of uncertainty. Fear thrives on the need to keep everything under control, whereas creativity means not being able to control anything. The trick is not to let yourself be guided by fear but by curiosity, and to learn, one experience after another, to be just a tiny bit braver every time.
Gilbert talks about her friend Susan in the book as an example of someone who has led a creative life. At the age of forty, Susan started practising figure skating again, which she had been passionate about ever since she was a child. As a teenager, Susan realised that she would not become a champion figure skater because she wasn’t quite talented enough, so she made the decision to stop skating. Skating without a goal seemed like a waste of time to Susan, but by the time she reached the age of forty, Susan felt listless, restless, and particularly drab. When she tried to think back to a time when she had felt happy and light-hearted, and therefore “creative” in her very own way, she realised that it was when she used to skate.
She wondered whether she still liked skating and decided to follow her curiosity and try it again. Susan discovered that not only did she still like skating, but she liked it even more than she used to, because having felt so weighed down before, she could better appreciate how happy it made her, and how special that was. While the story does not end with Susan quitting her job to become a professional athlete and win an Olympic medal, she did continue to skate, and still does to this day, just for fun. She skates every day, before going to work or in her spare time, for the simple pleasure of the wonderful state of grace she finds herself in when she skates. Susan has managed to discover her hidden gift, and this allows her to live a creative life, where she finds what Gilbert calls the Big Magic.
