An image comes to mind of the professional athlete, caught by aging, slowed reflexes and, often, injury who fights against time and diminshed productivity. The stars who linger past their prime. They do not want to grieve the end of their run. For we must let go to feel fully the pain, to tap into constructive discontent, to break open the box and discover anew our furies and passions. Especially passions based on our emotional and spiritual sides.
Passion goes beyond the sexual realm.
Suffering and Its Creative Discontents And the clean suffering of passion, feeling and seeing purely, in an unclouded almost childlike way, has been often linked to psychic death and creative rebirth. Pablo Picasso, the 20thc. We must break down old unchallenged habits of mind and senses, scrub psychic flotsam and jetsam, that confound our psychological, sensual and spiritual clarity. True suffering calms critical voices, soothes and releases us from dreaded fears. The pit in the stomach, the clenched fists and quivering jaw, the anguished sobs prove catalytic in time.