A $6.2 Million Banana

Yesterday, I saw a TMZ headline: "Duct-taped banana sells for $6.2 million at art auction." People

called it ridiculous. "Modernism has ruined art," they said. While some dismissed it as stupid, someone raked up millions for it. And that's precisely the power that I have found in creativity: not everyone needs to understand it.

Growing up, I didn’t understand my creativity. I couldn’t draw but I was always told how creative I was. My twin brother and I once took an old sofa frame, drilled skateboards to the bottom, and turned it into a roller coaster. We flew down the hill from our terrace until we crashed into the front gate, realizing that we had never thought to add brakes.

That same creative spark led me to Photoshop in 7th grade, during lockdown. I saw cool posters on social media and thought, “Could I make these?” I taught myself through YouTube, experimenting for hours a day. At that point, design was my world. My mom would yell for me to eat dinner, but I would be busy working on my next poster saying, "I’m almost done." I never was though, because every time, I wanted to make something better.

What started as a simple interest turned into an obsession. Five years later, I run my own graphic design company, working with brands like the Harvard Men’s Basketball Team and volunteering my skills to global nonprofits. Beyond these opportunities, graphic design taught me an important lesson of trusting myself.

Graphic design was my first means of creative expression, but it taught me to see creativity in everything. I am the artist of my own life, just as much as I am the artist behind the posters I create. I am constantly drawing my own path. Design has taught me that creativity in life isn’t about proving that my imagination has any worth to others. Creativity has taught me to let go of what you think so I can trust and be myself. It is about finding value in things for myself and then trusting myself enough to pursue it - and that’s exactly what I’ve done, whether it was building a trailer from scratch, volunteering at the Ukraine border, or summiting a 14,000 feet mountain in a blizzard. Creativity gave me the imagination to think of these things, and the confidence to achieve them.

The man who bought the banana ended up eating it on the spot, and people thought he was crazy. But maybe that was the point. Creativity isn’t supposed to make sense to everybody. It only needs to make sense to yourself. That’s what my creativity and my life keeps proving. Art is not about permission, and perhaps that's why I keep coming back to it: I don't do it for anybody else.