One essential struggle I’ve dealt with as an artist is that I learned to turn suffering into art. But the more I did that, the more suffering became a tool for creation. I started to fear that without this source of inspiration, I might lose my ability to create. There was a fear that find peace from that suffering would make me ‘ordinary’.
Pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. Pain is part of being human—temporary, meaningless in itself, a signal at best. A signal is information, and information is neutral until we place meaning on it. Suffering is the story we tell ourselves about that pain, the way we hold on to it, attach meaning to it, and make it part of our identity.
And fear—fear is something else entirely. Not the immediate fear that protects us from genuine threats, but anticipatory fear: “If I do this, then something I don’t want will happen.” This kind of fear is, ironically, a creative act. Our mind projects current conditions forward, predicts negative consequences, and keeps us from doing what we’d actually like to do. Worse, our nervous system reacts to this projection as if it were real, and we retreat. And what is the end result? We create nothing, bringing about the very thing we feared most!
Fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And like suffering, fear is a choice.
The truth is that fear—not a lack of suffering, not any condition we place on inspiration—is what most constrains us. Both fear and suffering give us an illusion of control. But we all carry some truth waiting to be expressed, and the resistance holding it back will either crumble, calcify or destroy us. Surrender is the only rational choice.
Human beings are rarely rational, though. More often, our defenses build until they force us to face destruction—and only then do we surrender. But once we do, once we release the need to suffer and the grip of fear and resistance, what remains is peace. And peace is what truly liberates us to create without constraints.
When I surrendered the need to manufacture inspiration from suffering, when I trusted the creative process itself, inspiration began flowing from unexpected places. There’s a lightness that comes from freedom. It doesn’t mean every creative attempt succeeds, but it means inspiration can come from anywhere—no longer dependent on a single source. When I fail—and I do—I move on, learn, and trust that inspiration will return in another form. In peace, the creative process feels more relaxed and expansive. There’s a sense of creating from fullness.
Freedom, not suffering, is where art truly begins.