<story><title>The downside of being happy: creativity kindled by sadness</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/25/why-happiness-might-be-getting-in-the-way-of-your-artistic-brilliance/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vinceguidry</author><text>People conflate happiness with joy. I can be happy and sad at the same time. I cannot be joyful and sad in the same instant, though I can flit between the two rapidly enough to occasionally cause alarm.&lt;p&gt;What you want to avoid is misery. I banished misery from my life sometime in my early twenties. I am unhappy somewhat often, but never miserable. Misery means not seeing a way out of the circumstances making you unhappy.&lt;p&gt;I believe emotional health revolves as much in how you see your emotions as which emotions you&amp;#x27;re experiencing. Reframing the emotions you feel can be a quite powerful experience for those not too jaded on the woo-woo aspect of it. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#x27;t lose my girlfriend, we just weren&amp;#x27;t right for each other.&amp;quot; If all you do is reframe, and never do any real learning, then sure, you&amp;#x27;ll end up miserable. But in general finding a way to reframe setbacks is a great way to find the energy to keep moving rather than wallow.&lt;p&gt;For some people, creativity is tied intimately to misery; I believe that people for whom their creative output relies on drug use are ultimately deriving it from misery. Minds need to be in a loose, free state to mix seemingly-unrelated concepts together. When one is truly miserable, they cannot see a way out of their predicament and so mind naturally finds a way towards that state. If they could see a way, then they&amp;#x27;d focus on that way, and having a single point of focus is pretty much the opposite of creativity.&lt;p&gt;The most prolific creators make a workflow out of managing their minds. They&amp;#x27;ll tune out in order to become unfocused enough to get an idea, then they&amp;#x27;ll focus on putting that idea to paper, or electronic media or whatever. Good coders are well-attuned to such a workflow, but often don&amp;#x27;t think of themselves as creative, perhaps because their output isn&amp;#x27;t immediately pleasing to the senses. Artistic, maybe not. But creative? Absolutely.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JacksonGariety</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s one exception this rule regarding creativity and misery: philosophy.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s my reasoning: if you&amp;#x27;re doing philosophy and you saw &amp;quot;a way out of the circumstances&amp;quot; making you unhappy (philosophical circumstances) you would be able to become a political theorist or a religious figure.&lt;p&gt;The misery is mandatory if you plan on being truly (i.e. purely) introspective and avoid being compromised by the hope of external circumstances being favorable, it seems.</text></comment>
<story><title>The downside of being happy: creativity kindled by sadness</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/25/why-happiness-might-be-getting-in-the-way-of-your-artistic-brilliance/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vinceguidry</author><text>People conflate happiness with joy. I can be happy and sad at the same time. I cannot be joyful and sad in the same instant, though I can flit between the two rapidly enough to occasionally cause alarm.&lt;p&gt;What you want to avoid is misery. I banished misery from my life sometime in my early twenties. I am unhappy somewhat often, but never miserable. Misery means not seeing a way out of the circumstances making you unhappy.&lt;p&gt;I believe emotional health revolves as much in how you see your emotions as which emotions you&amp;#x27;re experiencing. Reframing the emotions you feel can be a quite powerful experience for those not too jaded on the woo-woo aspect of it. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#x27;t lose my girlfriend, we just weren&amp;#x27;t right for each other.&amp;quot; If all you do is reframe, and never do any real learning, then sure, you&amp;#x27;ll end up miserable. But in general finding a way to reframe setbacks is a great way to find the energy to keep moving rather than wallow.&lt;p&gt;For some people, creativity is tied intimately to misery; I believe that people for whom their creative output relies on drug use are ultimately deriving it from misery. Minds need to be in a loose, free state to mix seemingly-unrelated concepts together. When one is truly miserable, they cannot see a way out of their predicament and so mind naturally finds a way towards that state. If they could see a way, then they&amp;#x27;d focus on that way, and having a single point of focus is pretty much the opposite of creativity.&lt;p&gt;The most prolific creators make a workflow out of managing their minds. They&amp;#x27;ll tune out in order to become unfocused enough to get an idea, then they&amp;#x27;ll focus on putting that idea to paper, or electronic media or whatever. Good coders are well-attuned to such a workflow, but often don&amp;#x27;t think of themselves as creative, perhaps because their output isn&amp;#x27;t immediately pleasing to the senses. Artistic, maybe not. But creative? Absolutely.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tedks</author><text>There are certain culturally universal emotions; happiness and sadness are two of them, but joy or misery aren&amp;#x27;t, and I&amp;#x27;ve never seen this definition of misery before in the literature. Is this based on your own framework and anecdotes or is there a source for it?</text></comment>