Creativity or criticism?

 
Two of my friends were recently  bewailing the fact that they'd come to poetry writing late in their academic careers. One of the questions that came up was about a creative/critical divide and I wondered how much of associative v. logical thinking is wired into us, innate or nutured. I can only give an example from my own life.

I think I was born with (and probably inherited from my dad) a naturally associative mind, which was why I loved poetry and stories, music and art so much as a child - I was writing 'poetry,' stories and making music when I was under 10. When I got to 'A' levels (and I hated the embryonic Eng. lit.crit./lit. theory part of those - I wanted to do it, not read about it) I realized I hadn't got much of a logical mind, needed in the real world, which was why I turned consciously to political and sociological theory. I then ended up teaching those, killing much of an arts-based creative life in the process for the next 20-odd years - the only one I really kept up in private and for myself was poetry writing, all others being diverted into home-making.

Then, in my late 30s/early 40s, depressed and sickened by the realities of educational and national politics, I reverted to my earlier interests, retrained in an entirely different field and left academic life. I've never regretted the shift back to the arts, nor have I regretted forcing myself through an academic, critical/logical life; both are of value now, but it was a tough way to learn - through experience.

I found out in later life that I have five major creative areas/drives/talents; towards the practice of the arts, towards politics/political theory, towards service to people, towards teaching and towards practicality. The trick has been to learn how to keep them in balance and not cut off a limb, as it were. I'm certainly much happier and more content now than I was in my early life.

Most people manage to balance the creative/critical impulses, I'd imagine, or settle for one or the other without regrets. It does bring up the issue of 'deep structures' in the mind/brain, though, much as I dislike pure structuralist theory. But questions remain about why we have them, if we do. Are they natural carriers for talents? Why do we have talents? How far back in childhood are they triggered? Are we born with a propensity for them to emerge, or are they already there - nature and nurture?

My own feeling now is that we are born with an urge to creativity and curiosity, however they display themselves in later life.