That’s my big concern, that education is meant among other things to develop people’s natural abilities, and I believe it really doesn’t do that. In many cases, it divorces people from their natural talents.

Most of us would be quick to say that we are free to think just about anything and to express ourselves in any way we see fit. In reality, artists do a lot of measuring, somewhere just out of conscious awareness, about what is safe or seemly to reveal and what is unsafe or unseemly.

What Stephen King, Michael Graves and William Morris knew was that creativity begets creativity. The creative spirit that resides within all of us is prolific, abundant, and flagrantly generous. It's only when we ignore our own creative impulses that they appear to go away.

In these times where conformity is being thrust upon us by governments, we urgently need strong individuals who are able to think and act creatively. Creativity threatens those who demand conformity.

Clinicians define “obsession” in the following way: an obsession is an intrusive thought, it is recurrent, it is unwanted, and it is inappropriate. Defined this way, it is obviously always unwelcome. But suppose a person is caught up thinking day and night about her current painting or about the direction she wants to take her art?

In the new movie "Nancy Drew," the heroine (played with style and grace by Emma Roberts) uses and celebrates her intuitive and intellectual abilities as a teen sleuth, and comes to accept the fact she is exceptional, and does not fit in with her high school peers mainly concerned with cliques, clothes and crushes.

In her book The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron writes, "The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union... Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as the creator but seldom see 'creator' as the literal term for 'artist.'

Although some areas that depend on physical performance, or accumulating and processing vast amounts of information, may become less easy or available as we age, many creative endeavors flourish with increasingly varied life experience and the kind of vitality adult development can nurture.

As filmmaker and author Kaila Kukla has noted, "Drama is a positive, joyful, and fulfilling way of learning... it gives children the opportunity to create learning situations that are meaningful to them. They find ways to tap their inner resources because they want to do so".

Most public schools may not have advanced much in terms of recognizing and nurturing people with exceptional talents.