BECOMING A HUMAN BY YING LIANG

A while ago, I was shuffling through a campus magazine. I saw a picture my friend took. It was titled Human, being, and the picture just had an arm—a tan, softly-lit arm—with the word “being” written in black ink across the skin.

In The 46 Rules of Genius: An Innovator’s Guide to Creativity, by Marty Neuneier, rule #45 simply states: “Become who you are”. We are humanbecomings.

These statements have haunted me since; both are closely related to my creative philosophy.

Creativity stems from the inner confidence to believe in your ideas, to silence your inner critic while drawing up the most fantastic and outrageous concepts. Creativity then lives on through the creation process by a lifestyle of learning and asking questions.

To become is to stay true to the self, which is essentially human. Our human-ness includes passion, empathy, things we build through our experiences and share with others. Becoming requires making more of what there is (or isn’t). Becoming is a self-fulfilling prophecy that I hope to live up to with each new day.