After you wrote this, I attempted to tease out of my mind what that purpose might be, with no success. Well there is the obvious one of it sometimes triggering si; hopefully that's not you're getting at here. I thought perhaps I paint more when I am sad? No. Perhaps my artwork has more intensity or vitality when I am sad? No. Maybe I am more empathetic towards others when I am sad? Nope, because the depression detracts from my abilit to be attentive to others. Still I am open to your wisdom on the purpose of sadness.
Also, as I cannot go to the ocean the name seabird no longer makes sense, and have changed my Sf name to Windhover.
I feel I could handle things better if there was only the damage rather than the added, and complicated pain of loss and homesickness.
Maybe "purpose" was the wrong word. I don't mean to suggest that it would help with creativity or any other practical pursuit. I don't think I can explain a method for this insofar as I'm still figuring it out on my own end. The below is entirely about what the work is, or might be, and not anything about "how" to do that work because I am not qualified. ----
I can say for myself that grief has made me a better person, but not while I was in the midst of it. Better in the sense of having more clarity about my values, and a new perspective about what is truly important (hint: not a whole lot). I'm softer, as in open to sharing with others and I do have more empathy. I mean empathy is pretty much the end result of dealing with life's shitty situations - so now I can relate to others who have lost a spouse better than someone who does not have that type of experience.
But this being said, it's not the case that this happens instantly. It was only after I got through the initial shock and grief, and learned how to cope with the ongoing grief, that I started to see how my experience could be used to help others.
I would say that it's a terrible idea to cultivate sadness, as in seeking out opportunities to be sad so as to develop our personal strengths. There are exceptions to this, but not for people outside certain monastic communities. For god's sake, life gives us more than enough adversity already!
Life is a mixed bag for the vast majority of people. We get some things that we want, and we also get things that we don't want. We don't get everything we don't want, though, just as we don't get everything we do want. We already know how to deal with it when we get what we want, because we already had the intrinsic motivation to seek that out. When I say shitty situations, I'm talking about when life gives us what we don't want and when we don't get what we do want. This is shit, but shit can be used as fertilizer. In writing about this, I want to acknowledge that I'm borrowing a lot from one of my favorite Buddhist teachers known as Ajahn Brahm. It was through working with his talks and writings that I came to the place where I am, though, so it's also from my own experience.
In dealing with shit, my "yeah, but" engine goes into gear. My most frequent refrain is, "What if I don't
want to be a gardener? WTF am I supposed to use shit for then?" The answer is that it's a metaphor in the first place so expecting to use it for a literal garden is a confused perspective. The understanding that I have for now, is that nothing life hands us is inherently good or bad. It's what we wanted in the first place that we compare against to make such evaluations. Loss and pain are definitely adversity, though. I'm not sure quite how to explain it in words yet - this is an abstract concept for me that I normally think about in non-linear mental models, which is hard to express in linear language.
In contemplating and testing these ideas, I have had the insight that, even pain and loss can be used to grow ourselves, but only if we decide to figure out how to use it. That's what I meant about not being good or bad inherently. I'm currently imagining the skill of finding ways to transmute shitty situations into growth as a spiritual
jiu-jitsu practice, meaning that we need to wrestle our "opponents" such as the adversity and our reactions of rightly feeling that as adversity. Once we have gotten ourselves into a place that allows us to look at it neutrally and consider that it might be leveraged in some way to our benefit and to our ability to help others, then the possibilities open up. It might not be something we had intended to learn, as in making you a better artist, but it can definitely be something "life" wants us to learn along the way.
If I were in your place, and I am in a similar spot dealing with my resentment issues, I would be working with a therapist on this - but not with a box-checking, fill in the codes for the insurance forms, type of therapist. It would need to be someone trustworthy and not only willing, but expecting, to be more of a consultant than a provider. I'm lucky in that I stumbled into this by getting advice from friends about a good therapist to go to. Otherwise it would have been a lot of trial and error before I found someone compatible.
Sorry that was so long. LMK if you want a TL;DR version, lol.
Thank you so much for connecting. I'm in support of your efforts, changes and of course YOU
)in my 2 year old Mac........and I agree, too many dang options skew my mind at times.
