Creativity without reckoning

Our creative work should not be judged only by its monetary value. And we should honour that more within ourselves.

It was shortly after September 11, 2001. I was part of a news crew filming the unfolding war in northern Afghanistan. Four of us and an Afghan driver were crammed into a very old Russian 4x4 that rattled and careened across the rutted pathways that served as roads across the steep mountain slopes. We were rushing to get to the front lines where we were to film the fighting between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban.

We passed through a tiny hamlet. Dimly, through the filthy, dust-covered window, I glimpsed a woman weaving a carpet. She was sitting on the ground with her coloured tufts of wool spread out around her. A wooden loom was propped up at an angle in front of her. The carpet was only about a quarter finished. It was the beginning of a beautiful work of art. I remember the main tints as dark blue interwoven with different shades of browns and yellows. She watched us as we trundled past her in our vehicle, heading for the war and the world-changing events that were happening in a valley only a few miles away from her.

That fleeting image of her peacefully weaving her carpet amidst all the chaos and fear around her has stuck in my mind ever since. One of the disadvantages of traditional news coverage is that far too often we, as journalists, are limited to focusing on one particular event. This means that often we miss so much else of what is happening in the country or the community around us. Of course, the events of the war against the Taliban were of primary importance that day, but there was something important about what she was doing. Partly, it was the very ancient story of women keeping alive the beauty and hopes of ordinary life while the men rush off to the destruction of war. But it also struck me that her struggle to keep weaving a carpet while the bombs and artillery shells exploded nearby was a powerful symbol of all that is intrinsically valuable in life and yet impossible to measure.

How could an economist ever realistically calculate the ‘unit cost’ of her carpet? How much the wool cost her certainly could be determined, but how could you calculate the value of her labour as she sat on the side of the road, hour after hour, patiently weaving while soldiers and journalists rushed past her to the war? How would you calculate the real cost of the incredibly complex journey that would transport the rug all the way from her dusty village to a market in faraway Istanbul or New York or Johannesburg?

It is impossible to estimate all these things in any meaningful way. She and the contemplative beauty of her work reminded me that there is love in the value of creating for its own sake. That we should strive for a society that values people like her more. We should give greater respect not only to the work they do, but we should honour ourselves more when we do such things ourselves – finding within our souls such expression beyond reckoning.