Create-Destroy-Recreate
- Gina Greenlee, Author
- Feb 8
- 3 min read
Mary said, “you need grounding before you take this big trip around the world.” So, she coached me to “create-destroy-recreate” art pieces for 30 consecutive days in the months leading up to the trip. Minimal instruction, no elaborate context, only “Try it and see what happens.”
Always playing with art, I was open to possibility in the moment without having to know what came next. For 30 days I painted, wrote, sculpted. Disassembled those projects then reassembled each to create something new.
Even as I engaged create-destroy-recreate, I didn’t understand that the art practice Mary gifted me was a powerful metaphor for living.
I was about to leave a comfortable senior management position and drain my 401K to travel the world solo. This trip also presented an opportunity to launch a professional writing career with a contract to blog weekly as I travelled. I would be generating a modest income of $200 per blog post, $800 per month. That’s it.
I thought I was merely crossing off two dreams on my proverbial bucket list. Mary, however, understood I was intentionally disassembling a life to travel the world for six months with no clue what I’d do when I returned. My recreated life would emerge by examining, and to some degree, reassembling remnants of the life I had just broken apart. Mary offered me a safe container to show up for the enormity of that momentous decision and for life’s twists and turns overall.
Letting Go
Every time we take what I call a hard left turn in our lives we are actively destroying one version of it. In that destruction we examine the different pieces and decide what we wish to take to the next leg of our journey and what we wish to leave behind. Dynamics will surface to incorporate into the emerging life.
When you marry, you destroy life lived as an individual to create new life with a partner. You bring to the marriage habits and beliefs that served you during your single years. Some of those will work in your new partnership. Some you must leave behind. As the partnership evolves, new ideas and habits will form that you will integrate into married life. If you choose to have children, then the life of two people must be deconstructed to create room for parenting. And on it goes. Relocation. Job change. Starting or returning to school. Divorce. The old life must die for the new life to be born.
Phoenix rising from the ashes is the classic archetype for create-destroy-recreate. Every life lived is an ongoing cycle of transition as we let go of the old to create anew.
No Expectations
As a teaching artist I’ve introduced create-destroy-recreate in primary and secondary schools in the United States. I have found children to be more open to this practice than most adults. They have minimal life experience and so fewer expectations.
Say What?
Friends resisted when I shared the practice with them. One friend, in a transitional period of her life, felt no passion or purpose. This coincided with the first year of the Covid 19 pandemic. Worldwide, we all felt the struggles of that moment.
I reflected on create-destroy-recreate and thought its alchemy could shift my friend’s energy.
“I’m not doing that,” she said. “Why would I want to create something only to destroy it?” This was a phone conversation, and I smiled when she said it though she couldn’t see my reaction. I said, “because you’ve been doing it your entire life. This is a metaphor for how we transition from one stage of life to another; a way to practice playing with possibilities.” She laughed and said, “No way am I doing that!”
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Will You Do It?