The Art of Sorrow
The Art of Sorrow
April 16, 2000
My days are full of sorrow. I’m sad about all the sadness I see in the world. Sorrow surrounds me. Pain and suffering is everywhere, constantly continuing. For me, there is no escaping it and I can’t just blissfully ignore it. I’m not entirely sure how to live with it—without it killing my spirit. Ultimately I know that if it doesn’t kill me, it will make me stronger. But, oh, what a struggle.
Sorrow, sadness, suffering, and the struggle to survive and to spiritually grow. Let’s face it; it’s not easy to face, day after day, year after year. It is easy to give up and give in to the easy ways of not seeing, feeling, or experiencing the pain of sorrow. It’s easy to become oblivious. Our modern world has many effective tranquilizers and painkillers to help us avoid pain. I know, I’ve tried almost all of them. They all work, but only for a short time. They are all very addicting; however, all end up being dead ends and life killers. I can’t live that way. For me there is no way to avoid the pain of living in a world of pain. I am sad.
My work is full of sorrow. As a mental health therapist, I see sadness in the eyes and lives of others all day long, hour after hour. I intimately see the pain of alcoholism and drug dependence, domestic abuse, depression, anxiety, rotten marriages, and addiction to gambling, food, sex, money, things, spending, and risky thrills.
I see people who have loss and those who are lost, and others who never received what they needed. I see many who are victims of injustice. I see people who are victims of an unjust economic system and others who are victims of an unjust justice system. I see people who suffer from physical as well as emotional pain. Everyone I see is suffering from spiritual sorrows.
I am a healer. I work to ease the pain and suffering of the people I see. I help people face their sorrows. I help people find hope and some happiness in a world that seems to have gone completely sad. Some days all the sadness and sorrow makes me sick.
I live in a world of sorrow. The world is constantly being destroyed and is constantly dying. The natural causes of decay and death are sad enough to deal with. It is, however, the man-made greed-induced causes of destruction, death, and despair that cause most of my suffering. The sadness of environmental devastation, worker exploitation, the conglomeration of wealth and power in the hands of a few, and the sadness of constant wars is killing me. The world feels so hopeless and I feel so helpless. How can I live in such a world of pain? What am I to do?
I am an artist. Art helps me to face the world of pain and to heal my wounded spirit. Art and symbolic living help me experience the quality of real joy and pleasure to counterbalance the vast quantity of suffering and sadness. Although art is magical and spiritual, it is no magic cure for all the spiritual pain I experience. I don’t expect art to save me from pain, suffering, or sadness. I know all too well the pain, suffering, and sadness that art itself creates. I know there is no escape.
Art teaches me to be creative with the sorrows of this life. Art creates. Art uses the awareness and the emotional energy of sadness and sorrow, struggle and pain, decay and death, to give birth to new living forms, to create new possibilities of order out of the chaos. Joy, happiness, pleasure, hope, wisdom, and aliveness can grow from and through the struggles of sadness.
As an artist, I hope to help the world heal the pain and suffering caused by people, upon people, and upon the planet. There is no need for this type of sadness. There are no excuses. The cause is self-centered greed and the choice to be deaf, numb, and blind to all the sadness and sorrow caused by self-centered greed. I hope to use the art, philosophy, and story of Curvism to create awareness of the sorrows and joys of this life and to help create change in the way we choose to live with one another on this beautiful, precious, and endangered Earth.