Creativity Salad: The Two Commitments You Need

Let’s overthink one of my mother’s dishes. Allergy warning: this article may contain nuts.

My mother, a notoriously bad cook, once tried to impress us with a “nut salad.” She knows I try to eat healthily, so she targeted me:

“Antonio, I made a nut salad!” she said, beaming.

I looked at the table. A towering bowl of dry lettuce stared back at me. If vertigo were a salad, this was it.

“Well, I see lettuce. Where are the nuts?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” she said, with a glint of mystery. “Nuts have vitamins, oils, antioxidants, mercury, and cyanide,” she made up on the spot.

“Mercury and cyanide do sound like your normal cooking,” my brother said.

My mother rolled her eyes and ignored him.

When it was time to eat, I dug through layers of lettuce. Finally, at the bottom, I found the smallest, sealed bag of walnuts. She hadn’t opened them, she hadn’t put them on the side, she hadn’t mixed them with the lettuce. She had hidden them away but still called it a nut salad.

“Are you serious? The nuts are in a bag at the bottom?”

With calm confidence, chin up and eyes looking towards Jesus, she replied, “Antonio, not everyone likes nuts.”

Our biggest family tradition: Confusion!

I went into that state where you have so many questions that if you start asking, you’ll be accused of overthinking and being petty. After all, it’s just a salad, not a big deal. And by then, I was pretty sure we are just two different flavours of neurodivergent.

After all the laughter subsided, I kept thinking about it. It wasn’t just about a salad anymore—it became a perfect way to explore one of the aspects of creativity: commitment.

Commit To Your Bold Idea, Go Nuts!

My mother had a self-imposed challenge: to cook a family meal that was healthy and impressive.

The practical side of it: make a salad, put nuts in it.

But the nuts were outside her usual cooking tendencies, and she lost her nerve. Mixing those nuts with the lettuce would just be too much for everyone, so she backed off.

But she didn’t change to a better idea that was comfortable for her, so the result was a bowl of lettuce—the supporting actress of foods, never the lead.

The vision got lost, and the creation lost its meaning and concept.

Commit With the Responsibility, Have some Bawls!

Now, once you make that bold choice, you’ve got to be ready for the consequences.

Some people don’t like nut salad, or maybe there’s an allergy. You could even do a survey beforehand, or have alternatives.

Or you can put the nuts on a side dish, making it optional.

Or you can go all in and accept that your creation is not for everyone. Only some people, indeed, like nuts in a salad.

The Courage

So, maybe we should ask ourselves: am I serving lettuce, or am I serving a bold, hearty nut salad?

People can sense hesitation, and they can tell when you’re skirting around a subject. One of the key aspects of creation is commitment.

But it’s also true that your “nuts” won’t be to everyone’s taste. Shying away might be hiding your best work, and you could be confusing hesitation with a bad idea.

So, what’s the takeaway? (And yes, we did have a takeaway that day.) Creativity isn’t just about coming up with bold ideas—it’s about fully committing to them. It’s about owning your choices, standing by them, and being ready to face whatever comes next.

My “nut salad” today is my nut salad story, the smallest of stories told with the best boldness I’ve got.