Pain goes hand in hand with creativity. But is that the only way?
I had this funny thought the other day about life, pain, and creativity. Happiness is thought to be a great detriment to the creative process; writers, poets, artists etc. are all rumored to be inherently more creative when they’re gifted with pain. Pain, loss, frustration, futility is the wellspring from which creativity pours forth. It’s why so many comedians teeter on the brink between depression and mania.
Sometimes I think I haven’t had enough (any) pain in my life... and that that’s why my thoughts seem to stagnate more often than not. Someone (I can’t remember who) once wrote that their parents had gifted them the worst thing in the world for a writer: a happy childhood. I was gifted with much the same, and life has treated me pretty damn well since.
But today I realized that my happy childhood, my happy life, has blessed with me something far greater than mere creativity. It’s given me a window to an idyllic world, a world unfettered by hardship or heartache. It is a world in which I will forever see the good and wonderful in people. In which I will look at a desolate landscape and see nothing but the potential for beauty, no matter how small. It is a world in which I will look for silver linings, no matter how naive it is to do so. And it is a world in which every unmet stranger is a potential friend.
Pain may make us more creative but it makes us less trusting, less open, less willing, less loving. It tears at us, mars us physically, mentally, emotionally until we are too broken, bitter, and bleak to see beauty. And we take all of that and destroy the ones who stand beside us.
So I take my happy existence and turn it on its head, inward against any pain I have or will endure. I refuse to be made less. I refuse to see a world devoid of hope. And I refuse to be that which destroys.
Looking for the silver lining, always,
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