I don't subscribe to the tortured genius myth. I don't think it's necessary to suffer in order to create. But I do think that out of what we have suf… - Maria Popova

Out of what we have suffered and do suffer comes that restlessness

to find meaning
to find beauty
to find wonder

to give voice and shape to what we feel

Lives interweave with other lives, and out of the tapestry arise hints at answers to questions that raze to the bone of life: What are the building blocks of character, of contentment, of lasting achievement? How does a person come into self-possession and sovereignty of mind against the tide of convention and unreasoning collectivism? Does genius suffice for happiness, does distinction, does love?

We spend our lives trying to discern where we end and the rest of the world begins. We snatch our freeze-frame of life from the simultaneity of existence holding on to the illusions of permanence, congruence, and linearity; of static selves and lives that unfold in sensical narratives. All the while, we mistake chance for choice, our labels and models of things for the things themselves, our records for history. History is not what happened, but what survives the shipwrecks of judgment and chance.

In the darkest times, we are the most starved for delight - for the self-permission for delight.