Image created by me using Midjourney
Let me tell you about the gatekeepers. You know the ones – the people who insist that in order to be a “real” artist, a “serious” writer, or a “legitimate” entrepreneur, you have to suffer.
You have to spend years locked away, wringing your soul out onto the page or a canvas, climbing some lonely mountain in search of enlightenment that only they seem to possess. If you aren’t miserable, if you aren’t sacrificing your joy and peace and sanity, then you must not be doing it right. (Whatever the hell that means anyway.)
If you want to start a business, you must work 22 out of 24 hours a day and humble-brag incessantly about how you’ve done so. Tell everyone from your parents to your friends to the postman how busy you are.
This mindset is everywhere. Elizabeth Gilbert mentions it in Big Magic when she talks about academic writers who spend years crafting a book that perhaps four people will read. And they are somehow satisfied with this outcome because, after all, so many of them are high on their own supply. They can look down their noses at us mere mortals who might create a book that’s read by 100 people (LOL) instead of only four other crusty academics who exist in a snobby echo chamber. These are the same gatekeepers who want you to believe that your creative work is only legitimate if it’s cloaked in agony. They are obsessed with themselves, believing the sole way to create something of value is to endure self-imposed misery, to self-flagellate until your work is deemed worthy.
They act as if joy is an affront to creativity, as if delight makes the work meaningless. These are the people who side-eye you if your book isn’t dense enough, if your painting isn’t tortured enough, if your startup isn’t fueled by sleepless nights and emotional breakdowns. There’s this pervasive belief that ease and creativity can’t coexist – that to truly be great, you have to bleed for it.
But here’s the truth: you don’t have to suffer to create. You don’t need the approval of those who turn art or entrepreneurship into some grim rite of passage. Joy is not only allowed in the creative process; it’s necessary. Joy is what gives the work life. It’s what keeps you coming back to the page, to the easel, to the drawing board. It’s what keeps you open to the magic.
I saw this firsthand with Dag Hammarskjöld’s legacy – dusty books that have long ago gone out of print and painfully dull articles in 6-point font that no American will ever read outside of the Ivy League. And even then, it’s only done to sound like the most insufferable popinjay at some cocktail party about as entertaining as an old boot. “Oh, yes, old chap. I say, I’ve just written a long article about Dahg Hammerhoeld and I’m simply amazing for doing so.”
So what did I do? I channeled my irritation into something inspiring. After all, I did once create a podcast episode titled “Your Irritants Can Be An Accelerant!” I was tired of Dag as a one-dimensional character – a stuffy intellectual or a “Christian mystic” (again, what does that even mean?) who was obsessed with theology. Dag himself lamented that the media reduced him to a caricature and no one saw the real man. Well, I’ve endeavored to try. Like two entangled photons waving at each other from across the span of time, I thought, “I want to see you. You. Not a cartoon of you.”
Dag lived a life full of passion and light, not one confined to cobwebby attics and classrooms. For example, one evening when he was walking home from work, he saved a man from committing suicide. The man jumped into a river and tried to drown himself. Dag went in after him and pulled him out and then convinced him to give life a second chance. Dag the human, the heart, the soul deserves to be seen, dammit. His legacy is worth more than being hoarded by gatekeepers, and so is yours.
You don’t need to earn your creative worth through abject misery. You don’t need to pass some arbitrary test of suffering to be deserving. Whatever it is you’re making, create it with love, with joy, and with the audacity to ignore the people who think art is only “real” if it hurts.
I am the author of the forthcoming book, Decoding the Unicorn: A New Look at Dag Hammarskjöld, where I explore Dag’s leadership style and his personal journey in greater depth. For updates, please go here: https://sara-causey.kit.com/2d8b7742dd.