Creativity's life

Margaret Feinberg wrote Discovering Joy in Your Creativity, in which she talks about monarch butterflies as miniature works of art.  Sometimes in San Antonio, I encounter a cloud of butterflies fluttering across a road, and it’s hard not to be intrigued.  I ponder the fact that some live only a year or less, which seems so short.  Plenty of museums spend big money to preserve works of art for years beyond the lifetime of the artist.  Yet God, the master artist, knew these butterflies would wither so quickly, and He still created them.  He imposed their design, having no constraints on their creation.  He had purpose for their short life.  Hence the question, would I spend time creating something if I knew it wouldn’t last long?  I do know that contemplating a complicated dinner recipe can exhaust my brain, usually leading me to opt for something simple.  And I do know after hearing my mom talk about the delicate measures of her cheesecake recipe, which might be my favorite in the world, I’d much rather eat her cheesecake than make it myself.  However, I’ve immensely enjoyed playing with kids and lots of wooden blocks and building them into whole cities and stacking them into tall towers that I knew would soon tumble to the ground.  And I look back to my school-teaching days, specifically to one year I lost a job.  Great strides in learning took place, both academically and spiritually, with many fun ideas incorporated into class, yet the door closed.  It was the culmination of many wonderful experiences that were clearly well worth the effort.  Would I have spent all those long hours "creating" if I’d known ahead I’d be there only a short time?  I’ll never know.  Who’s to say a longer time is always better?