“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” – Erich Fromm, German philosopher and psychoanalyst

When I first read this quote some years ago, I imagined a scientist overturning a law of physics or an artist inventing a new genre. Back then, I understood the certainties that Fromm suggested as being something external, like gravity or the shape of the earth. I wrote something about a decade ago that was pretty, innocent, and safe. 

As I figured back then, ‘certainties’ encompass our ingrained assumptions, preconceived notions, and established facts about the world around us. Within the comfort of these certainties, many of us are content but also complacent. It doesn’t matter if these accepted truths might be fundamentally flawed or just one of many truths. This predilection for the ‘known’ is why truly original ideas can face fierce resistance. 

But returning to this quote some years later, I’m diverging from the safe script my original essay followed in exchange for something entirely different. The “certainties” that Fromm suggested are holding us back are far more intimate and far more dangerous. I call them the Scripts. 

From a very young age, I realized that people around me—adults, teachers, and community leaders—were following various scripts that were boring, generic, and largely unfulfilling. They were acting out plays they didn’t write and didn’t seem to enjoy. They clung to the certainty of “The Path”: go to school, get the job, follow the faith, retire, and die.

I didn’t want any part of that nonsense. Yet, for years, I walked that path anyway. I did it not because I believed in the Certainty, but because I feared the alternative. I was forced down paths that were wrong for me because I didn’t want to be ostracized by the people I was convinced “wanted the best for me.”

The tragedy, of course, was that they didn’t even know what was best for themselves. They were clinging to their “certainties” like a life raft, terrified that if they let go, they would drown in the complexity of the real world. Fromm was really saying that to be  truly creative is to voluntarily let go of that raft.

We must make the unpopular choice that the “script” we’ve been given (whether it be the syllabus of a university, the dogma of a church, or the timeline of a career) is a fabrication. This is why creativity is so terrifying. It’s not so much about “making things” and more about risking the social safety that comes with conformity. Having the audacity to abandon our firmest beliefs can have steep social costs, and eventually, I decided it was worth it to find a life path that I’d find more fulfilling. 

That was some time after I wrote the first version of this essay, which I’ve decided to cast to the wind. I’m letting it evaporate with that past version of me that was still clinging unnecessarily to a sense of conformity that did nothing but waste years of my life chasing my own tail.

To be an autodidact, to truly teach ourselves, is so much more than acquiring new information. We must also embrace un-learning, a painful process of identifying the “Certainties” that were installed in us by institutions and systematically deleting them.

The most dangerous certainty is the idea that there is a “correct” way to live a life. Schools operate on the certainty of the answer key. Churches operate on the certainty of their dogma. But nature, the reality I face every day on my Vermont farm, operates on no such certainty. There’s no answer key for a mud season that refuses to end. No dogma can give me a solution for a pipe that freezes in the night.

Creativity is the terrifying, exhilarating act of writing your own life, in real-time, without a script. You can’t fear ignorance, misinformation, or sheer stupidity. To be truly creative, you have to be prepared to overcome your own personal assumptions about things. Be ready to admit that certain things you accepted as certain truths are likely to be wrong without the proper evidence of their veracity. Don’t be content with assuming certainty about anything you hold dear. Otherwise, you won’t be able to emotionally handle the possibility that any of them are actually untrue. 

We must be able to function without an answer key. This means gaining the willingness to look at the raw data of our lives—our specific neurological needs, relationships, and environment—and build a solution that exists outside the approved manual. Of course, we must be honest about the cost. When you let go of the Scripts, the reaction from the people still holding them is rarely applause. It’s often confusion, silence, or even fury. 

We see this fury today when new technologies threaten the old scripts. Look at the violent counteraction against cheap, accessible AI tools. The rage isn’t just about the technology, but about the disruption of the status quo. The “Certainty” of how art is made, or how text is written, is being challenged, and people are reacting with the same fear as the adults in my childhood who clung to their life rafts.

I feel this keenly living as part of a queer couple in a rural environment. My very existence here is an act of creativity; I’m choosing to build a life that defies the local “certainties” of what a household should look like. 

Yes, the resistance is real. It shows up in the locals who refuse to acknowledge us, or the social jaggedness of navigating a community that doesn’t have a script for people like me. In my younger years, I viewed this resistance as a sign I was doing something wrong. Now, I view it as a diagnostic tool. If your life isn’t meeting resistance, you probably haven’t let go of enough certainties yet.

Disruption is uncomfortable and messy. But without it, there’s no movement. The chaos of the universe is not a mistake to be fixed; it is the medium in which we work. Yes, being uncommonly creative is a dangerous task. But the danger is the point. Some of the most so-called ‘dangerous’ ideas can end up catalyzing significant leaps in human progress.

The “safety” of the script is a hallucination. The job isn’t safe, nor is a pleasant retirement guaranteed. What may be termed as a “normal” life isn’t insulated from tragedy or unprecedented circumstances. So, we might as well be dangerous and let go of the raft.

Don’t let anyone tell you to “let things be.” No one gets anywhere through being complacent. Keep challenging not only your own assumptions but everyone else’s, as well. This is the only way to gain true knowledge. Since this is the only world we’ll likely ever know, we may as well make the best of it while we can.

~ Amelia Desertsong