220. An Endless Struggle

Making art means struggling with the problem of expression. There’s something you see and you need to share it with others. But you can’t communicate it directly, for you know your words will not be able to reach the thing you see. Your only hope is to somehow show it to others. To do this, you’ll have to create something new.

But creating is not straightforward, and the thing you make is not always capable of doing what you hoped. Your new creation might not possess the power it needs to be effective. This means you have to try again and again. Your efforts amount to a practice that gradually makes you more capable of expression. But it is experienced as a daunting struggle of regular failure and self-doubt.

There’s little that can be done about this beyond offering yourself compassion. Others might not understand what you’re going through. Unless they’ve experienced something similar, they might even find your struggle ridiculous. They might chide you for even trying and tell you to expend your efforts on something more practically useful.

But this is not a real option for you. You know you have to keep going. You know you’d never be able to live with yourself if you gave up. You need to create, so you will keep trying. You will choose the struggle of expression over and over again. Even after you finally create something beautiful, you will choose it again as you need to show us even more. There is no end to the struggle. It lasts as long as you try to express more and more of your vision.

The result is that all art is partly about struggle, about discovering the courage to overcome. This is shown through the existence of every last artwork, regardless of whether it takes the form of a painting, a performance, or a poem. Every artwork helps us become stronger, more courageous, more defiant beings. It helps us see that our struggle culminates in an even more beautiful world.