I am not going to insult you, reader, and propose that hard times cause good work: for every breakup or bubonic plague that makes a good sad song or Decameron, there’s millions of other awful events that yield nothing but pain and misery. Instead, I suggest we flip the conceit on it’s head. For every wonderful piece of work, there’s usually a seed of introspection that reveals a deeper truth.
In dark times, the things that were fluff become the things that people need and hold on to, tightly. To paraphrase Tolstoy, everyone’s unhappiness is unique, but there are things that join us, and the the things that join us are the things that give people purpose — faith, insight into their fellow humans, and strength to get on with the ordinary business of living. As a creative person, you are uniquely positioned to be doing those things.
Suffering is a part of life, but suffering does not have to be the end state. Making something important to you is an expression of what is inside you. The form is immaterial, whether an app or poem. But the creation of something for an audience of one is so in opposition to what we’ve have been told is important — the revenue, the likes, the audience — that it feels radical in it’s lack of supervision.
Indulge me in a mild thought experiment. Pretend, for a moment, you are the only person on the planet. No one will ever see your work. No compliments or awards will ever come. No critique or canceling will ever occur. You don’t have to worry about approval from an app store, or going viral, or whether it gets picked up by Netflix. There is no audience, at all. What would you make?
If you’re anything like me, so poisoned by the internet, to actually consider this is a little bit jarring. It is in this moment, you see how truly captured we are by the current numbers game. This is how the forces of darkness win — they convince you that what you make is only important in how it is related to what they want: more power, more money, more attention.
But it is not so. You do not have to play their game, really. You may have to work their jobs, you may have to exist in their world, but you don’t have to care what they think. It’s not your fault.
This is what you must do: you must think and sit and consider what value you bring to the world. You are free, if you want.
