194. Socially Necessary Pain

At some point in life, we will all have an experience where another person causes us to feel emotional pain. These experiences are sometimes as ordinary as someone making too much noise at night causing you to lie awake in frustration, and sometimes they are as heart-wrenching as someone telling you they no longer want you to be part of their life.

Experiences like these happen because we’ve collectively agreed that there are pain-causing actions we must be freely allowed to take in order for the social organism to function well. In the case of noise-making, we’ve decided that strictly policing rare occurrences of loud noise would too greatly restrict our freedom to enjoy ourselves. In the case of social rejection, we’ve decided that it’s a fundamental part of human relationships that we each have the freedom to choose whom we have them with.

193. The Lost Image

He wakes earlier than usual, feeling energized and well-rested. His eyes adjust quickly to the bright light pouring in through the single large window. It’s mid-summer and the sun is already well above the horizon.

He rises from the bed and dresses purposefully in his usual work attire. Opening the window, the crisp air of the morning fills the room. He feels refreshed in every way. He feels his body is capable and his mind is prepared.

192. A World Of Exaggeration

Everything you see is an exaggeration. This is because you are only seeing one side of things, while the other sides remain hidden. When you see only one side, you automatically expand that part to become the whole, filling in the blanks using your existing understanding. You might do this so well that you convince yourself you’re actually seeing the whole. But this is never the case. There is always more to reality than your current awareness can capture.

191. Creativity Is Compassion

Creative action is compassionate action. Every creative act makes explicit something that was previously unseen, and in doing so it helps those who encounter it see more of their own self and the world. By engaging with an artwork, we undergo a wholly new experience, which grants us an opportunity to become aware of what we have not already noticed. What is created by the artist is not just a physical artwork, but a broader awareness in the audience of what exists and what is possible in life.

190. The Search For Style

The artist’s concern is always style. It is the style of an artwork that most grants it aesthetic value, and it is this value that we most appreciate. The artist wants to develop a style that is beautiful so that the works they create will be popular and loved.

But the artist only ever has one style available to them. It’s the style that emerges directly from the sincere expression of their aesthetic intuitions. These intuitions arise out of the totality of the artist’s experience. This includes the works of other artists they have seen and their own history of art making, but it’s also more. It is all of the events of the artist’s life, all of their feelings and thoughts and perceptions, all of their memories and dreams, all of their judgments and values. In other words, the artist’s unique style is a reflection of their own composite humanity.

189. Stuck In The Past

You can’t stop replaying past events. You keep wondering if there might have been a better way, if you could have done something differently. Perhaps if you’d made a different choice, you might be in a much better place, somewhere more whole, peaceful, and happy than where you are now.

You wonder about this because your life feels lacking, and this lack worries you. You feel you’re missing something, and this missing element has made your life inferior to the one you’d imagined for yourself. You know you once had this missing thing and you don’t understand how you lost it. You went from a world of bliss and endless possibility to whatever this is. All you know is that this is worse, and you cannot shake that feeling.

188. To Be Always More

She is standing alone when a man approaches and says hello. He looks altogether harmless, so she returns the greeting. They’re at a social event and meeting new people is what you’re supposed to do.

He tells her that he likes her earrings. She smiles and thanks him. He asks her if she’s enjoying the event, and she says that she is. She doesn’t ask any questions in return. She’s terrible at thinking of questions. The burden thus falls to him.

187. Productivity And Compassion

When I feel I’m not making enough progress, I can easily become frustrated. This is especially true when the source of the delay is my own carelessness. I’ve been doing something other than what I should be doing, and now I’m behind schedule. Often the problem is simply that I’ve been distracted by something that has taken my attention away from my task. Seeing the amount of time I’ve lost, I judge myself harshly.

186. Words Say Too Much

The problem with language is that it always says too much. This is especially true when we’re trying to talk about how we feel. Our words come out sounding like a solemn declaration of fact, as though the emotions we’re describing are substantial, permanent, and unchanging, when they might be none of these things.

Perhaps our words only describe how we’re feeling at this one moment in time. Perhaps the feeling will have vanished in the next hour, the next day, or the next month. Perhaps the feeling doesn’t have the mass our words seem to grant it. Perhaps it is only meagre and small.