The Unwelcome Teacher
Paul Cezanne, La Douleur (1868–9)
We spend much of our lives trying to avoid it.
As adults, we deny it’s very existence in our past experiences.
As friends, we lie or equivocate to our loved ones to avoid being the bearer of it.
As parents, we will move heaven and earth to shield our kids from it.
What is it?
Pain.
Yet the pain that we spend so much energy suppressing and avoiding can also be one of our greatest teachers, one of our main catalysts for growth. It’s a truth that has been inscribed in human stories and epics from Homer to Pixar. Every hero, in order to triumph, must first endure a great loss.
"I judge you unfortunate,” Seneca wrote, “because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent—no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you."
As creatives, however, we often feel pain more acutely than our peers. “Many great artists first develop sensitive antennae not to create art but to protect themselves,” Rick Rubin says. “They have to protect themselves because everything hurts more. They feel everything more deeply.”
Film director Destin Daniel Cretton, whom you and I have talked about before, recently discussed the inspiration he draws from transformative loss. From those who accept the lessons that pain can offer. It was a core theme of his film Shang Chi.
“What I find so inspiring in my life,” Cretton said, “is when I come across human beings who are not only able to push through their pain, but who are able to transform it into an actual strength or superpower.” And that’s exactly what Shang Chi does in the film.
This is not to say that we need to go looking for pain just to find a lesson—each day surely has enough pain of its own.
But artists who have an outsized sensitivity to pain can also tap into outsized insights into the human condition. It’s why novels like Chaim Potok’s The Chosen (one of my favorites) or Jane Austen’s Persuasion are so beloved. Why songs like Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” and Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You” ring a profoundly human chord. Why films and paintings and poems and plays teach the world how to learn from loss.
Ask ChatGPT how to deal with loss, and you’ll get advice. Ask an artist, and you may well get Hamlet.
“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching,” Charles Dickens wrote in Great Expectations. “I have been bent and broken—I hope—into a better shape.”
As have we.
***
Note: The Rubin quote about artists’ feeling more deeply is from The Creative Act, page 7. Cretton’s quote about transformational loss comes from his appearance on the ReelBlend Podcast, Sept. 1, 2021. Seneca’s quote on misfortune comes from On Providence, 4.3. The Dickens quote is from Great Expectations, but is also quoted in Matt Haig’s The Comfort Book, page 235, which is where I found it.
This article was originally sent to my email list subscribers on The Creative Process Newsletter. Put your email in the field below, or sign up here to join other creators and get insights every Monday. Want to see past editions first? Click here.