There has never been a time like this where ideas are overflowing and creativity is abundant. Companies around the world are echoing one thing – that is, the importance of creativity to fuel innovations and in return, boost growth.

In the world of much more fierce competition and short-termism, we are pushed (and often pressured) to come up with something new, something different, and something exciting all the time… but not always something meaningful...

And in the quest to put out work that breaks the clutter, we end up making more clutter with creativity that maybe different, but mostly marginal. In the end, it leaves us coma of overdosed boredom than alive more inspired by the results of our own work.

Maybe we have lost our fire and souls. Maybe, we have parked that meaningful work we have been planning to do for too long.

But either way, we seem to have been too comfortable with our research-proof work and approval-guaranteed templates.

We don't fight enough for our own reason to exist - that is creating work that influences human behavior, feelings, and spirit.

We know we are not delusional enough to think that we are saving the world. But we can - and must — take pride of our work and that our work matters.

Maybe it is a good time for us to revisit why we do what we do, and reminisce why we have fallen in love, in the first place, with the creative industry. Maybe it is time we stop and ask ourselves what is the purpose of our profession and why it should matter for us?

And maybe by doing these, we could find where we keep that fire in us and lite it up again.

Because purpose is not profit. Purpose is about losing yourself to something bigger in you to create something that are meaningful and of value to others.

In this year’s Citra Pariwara, we want to encourage and inspire all of us, the creative professionals, to find that bigger self in us and remember all the “whys” of our existence.