Sadness is that annoying guest who doesn’t know when to arrive and when to leave. The first thing we want to do when it knocks on our door is to slam it shut. However, lurking behind its dark veil is a precious gift that has the potential to inspire and guide us on our path if we’re brave enough to take advantage of it: creativity. Yes, believe it or not, during those down periods, that’s when things can start clicking. That’s when ideas creep in like the early morning light. Let’s take a closer look at this phenomenon and understand how we can use it to cultivate inspiration amongst all that darkness.
Emotions are like paint, and there are lots of different shades and hues. The goal is to be happy, but when you are sad is the time when you are most creative. When was the last time a brilliant idea popped into your head when all was well in your world? It just doesn’t happen as often as if you’re feeling a challenging emotion.
The Anatomy of Creativity in Sadness: Why does being sad make us more creative? One answer seems straightforward: sadness makes us think more intensely. The poet, bereft in his candlelight, has to ponder over quiet words: all those truths and objects that beauty can only catch at the still point of deep thinking.
Another is that sadness makes us more empathetic by not separating us from life but making us closer to it. Anyone who has ever felt low will tell you that a lowering of mood brings with it an enhanced sensitivity to the sadness of others, the mood swings of living. This openness to empathy connects us with the lives of others through the shortest, sweetest route — the sharing of a specific emotional state with a fellow human being — faster than a lengthy exposition of their life’s story would ever manage. This is why so many creative acts, charitable projects, and positive reforms often spring from a dark pit of personal loss — each a triumph of light over darkness.
Real-Life Examples:
Let’s remember some famous examples where sadness led to creativity:
- Music scholars: Some of the most beautiful songs were born of sadness. From Adele to Beethoven’s symphonies, music has always summoned a melancholy connection to universal suffering.
- Works of literature: Many literary writers have used their pain to produce masterpieces. By converting their body and mind anguish into stories and poetry, writers such as Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Ernest Hemingway have transformed their sorrow into art, touching the hearts of readers.
- Philosophical and Scientific Breakthroughs: Even in scientific discovery, sadness could help to provide new insights — how else can we explain how, in a decade of melancholic seclusion, Isaac Newton discovered his theory of gravity shortly after his mother’s death?
Thus, my next drab felt thing: Sadness engenders creativity. Yes. Born from your depths of moroseness. Your melancholy methadone. Your melancholy morphine. For when you feel sad, by all means, let yourself be sad. Because sad is yummy and familiar. And, most perilously; that we are often like ruddy fish that greet the wellspring of creative thought — birthed in the furls and eddies of darkling stillness, where our fertile ideation can swell and grow and divide. And these moments of inner mind-germination occur because we are feeling emotions. And they say: In our shining light we have found the sun, And in our winter worst we found fishing fun. Or whatever.