What's Wrong with Hard?

Creativity, Resilience, and Hope

“But I am the Fire” Archival Print—Blue. Sarah Bush

How do you respond when something is difficult?

I think about this a lot because I’m an obsessive learner. I’m often doing new things I’m not very good at (yet) and sometimes it’s very hard.

When I experience something hard as super stressful, I notice that I treat it as if it’s inherently stressful. But of course, the stress stems from my feelings about its being difficult, not the difficulty itself.

Lately, I’ve become very interested in separating what’s hard from what’s stressful. Sure, there’s unavoidable overlap, but probably not as much as we think.

Culture and Perception

We have a strange relationship with “hard” in American culture.

On the one hand, we’re supposedly all about “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps” and believing in the story that “anyone who works hard enough can get ahead.”

On the other hand, we’re infatuated with “natural talent” and “overnight success.”

Several years ago, I heard a news story about two studies on Western vs Eastern child-rearing. One researcher studied the differences in how parents praise their children in the U.S. and Japan, and the other researcher investigated problem-solving skills in first graders in both countries.

In the study of first graders, each set of students was given a math problem that was impossible to solve. In the first five minutes, the American children stopped working and said, “Oh, we haven’t learned this yet.” In Japan, the six-year-olds worked steadily for 45 minutes until the researchers finally intervened and explained that the problem was actually unsolvable.

In the study on praise, the researcher found that when a child succeeds in the U.S., a parent or teacher will usually tell them it’s because they’re smart. In Japan, they’ll tell them it’s because they worked hard.

Intelligence is something we perceive as innate. You have it or you don’t. Hard work, on the other hand, is about effort, which is available to anyone.

Children absorb their own culture’s priorities extremely early. And to me, the U.S. first graders had already learned that success should come quickly and that having to struggle indicates that something is wrong.

As a culture, I think we perceive struggle as sign we should quit. If we’re struggling at something, we must not be natural at it. And if it’s not something that comes naturally, we probably shouldn't bother. It’s time to “read the writing on the wall” and accept our limitations.

We even have a word for people who succeed in spite of their limitations—overachievers—a backhanded compliment that reveals how conflicted we are as a society about achievement, ability, work, and talent.

And while I do actually believe we admire hard work in this country, I think we admire success more. And I think what we’ve been taught to admire most is effortless success.

Unfamiliarity & Expectations

Like athletic ability, I think a lot of people perceive creativity and artistic ability as an innate talent—something you either have or you don’t.

In the same way that most people don’t know how anything is made anymore because they don’t see it, most people are also unfamiliar with the creative process itself because they don’t experience it.

And technology has also sped up so many tasks that it has distorted our collective perception of how long anything should take to do. How much effort something should require.

When microwaves first came out, it felt like a miracle that you could “bake” a potato in nine minutes.

Now I’m practically appalled that it takes nine minutes. Nine minutes! Are you kidding me? I have a life to live here.

Embracing Struggle

The creative process is a step into the unknown.

To innovate or make something new requires creativity. Searching. Exploring. Playing. (Perhaps the ‘play’ aspect is why so many people think creativity is for children or that it should just be easy and fun.)

But creativity also requires taking risks. And risk-taking involves struggle and making mistakes. Rather than perceiving struggle as a sign that something has gone wrong, we must embrace it as inherent in the process—the only way to experience success.

A Crisis of Meaning

Most importantly though, to create is to make meaning.

I wrote that on social media the other day and then immediately thought, “that feels true, but what does it mean really?”

So I considered how I experience my own creativity and art making. And I realized that as I delve into a project, as I explore and search and notice and wonder, what I’m really doing is connecting. Connecting to my materials, my tools, and to the ideas I’m exploring. When I create, I’m deeply connecting to the world around me.

When we connect, we make meaning. We discover meaning. We receive meaning. We offer meaning.

We create and experience a gut reaction: “That feels true.” or “This feels right.” Whether the artwork is monumental, or a simple arrangement of colors in a sketchbook—it’s the rightness of connection and relationship that brings us back to the creative process.

This is making meaning.

And since we seem to be in a crisis of meaning in this country right now, knowing how to make meaning seems especially important. What do we value? What matters? Who are we?

Your personal creativity matters now more than ever—in whatever form that might take. When you strengthen your creative muscle, you also strengthen your willingness to do something hard. You develop “creative resilience.”

Creative resilience is a willingness to stand in the ambiguity of “process” without knowing the end result and draw on your creative resources to problem-solve. To search. Explore. Play.

To make mistakes and take risks.

The more you do this, the better you get at it.

And the more you make friends with the experience of “hard,” the stronger you become.

Creative Resilience: Now More than Ever

What’s happening right now in our country feels very hard. And dangerous. And what’s worse, we didn’t sign up for this mess. But this is where we are.

We’re at a collective turning point. We need to create something new. To re-imagine who we are, what we value, and build a future that includes everyone—including other life and the earth itself. This will require intense creativity and resilience. Yours and mine. We’ll need to search, explore, play, make mistakes, and take risks.

And you know why we might succeed? Because we’re innately creative. But deep down, we’re also willing to do hard things. To struggle and not give up. Even if it takes a long time.

If we can do that, I think we got this.

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