Your creative work feels pointless next to the world's problems
Your creative work feels pointless, even self-indulgent, next to the world's real problems — the suffering, the injustice, the crises that seem to demand serious attention. How can you justify making art when there is so much that matters more? The guilt of creating amid a suffering world undermines your permission to make anything at all.
This is a serious and conscientious worry, and it deserves a serious answer, for your making is not the frivolity your guilt names it. Beauty and meaning are needs, not luxuries, even amid suffering — people in the midst of hardship have always turned to art and story and song for comfort and endurance, and the creative work of humanity has sustained people through their darkest passages, so to make something beautiful or true serves a real need of the human spirit, especially amid difficulty. You are not required to solve everything to do good — behind your feeling is the impossible demand that unless your work directly solves the gravest problems it is worthless, but making things that give others meaning and comfort is genuinely among the many ways to contribute, and you can make and also care about the world's problems in the ways available to you. And your particular gift is best spent where it truly lies — you serve the world best by giving what you actually have to give, not straining at work that does not fit you. Your making adds real good. What makes it feel pointless to you?
What changes unlock by starting
- You see beauty and meaning as real needs, not luxuries
- You release the demand to solve everything to do good
- You see making as a genuine contribution to the world
- You spend your particular gift where it truly lies