Content Warning: This article references nudity and blood.
Time and time again, I have found myself attributing the source of my greatness to sorrow and struggle. Good grades appear to be the product of grueling study, hole-in-ones preceded by heads in the wall. With my last working pencil splintered in my fist, I cannot help but wonder if this is necessary. In a world so eager to dismiss our woes as essential to our wonder, is struggle really the key to success? Must we be tortured by our craft?
The notion that to truly be dedicated and masterful in our craft, we must be tortured by it is not particularly new. Archetypes such as the Tortured Artist or the Tortured Poet have existed since the Ancient Greeks, with philosophers like Plato and Aristotle suggesting a link between genius and madness. The bloody aftermath that we are hanging in museums is what makes these two so great. It is possible to learn and create without suffering in the process. You may just need to reevaluate what it is you are looking to craft.
In the pursuit of mastering the marginal cost curve, I have personally found myself tortured by the derivatives of ideas and taunted by the realization that I am simply less economically intuitive than some of my peers. I have spent the last ten weeks feeling suffocated by supply and doomed to the insatiable demand of my chosen field of study.
A few weeks into my Microeconomics class, I began to have this recurring dream where I am in class taking a quiz, and during said quiz, one of my faceless peers leans over, examines my paper, and belittles me for the contents on the page. After the teasing and taunting by said faceless peer, my nose starts to drip, and I get blood all over my quiz.
As if the recurring dream was not stressful enough, I started sleeping poorly altogether, tossing and turning the night before a lecture. With every absence deducting a full percentage point from your overall grade, I could not afford to oversleep, and my body knew that.
They say that the body keeps score, but I think that mine benched itself a month into this class. I should have been more concerned about my stress when I missed my period. Alas, the absence of blood was the least of my worries, for I was trying to focus on the silver linings over the red ones.
S*** finally hit the fan when it stopped hitting the bowl. Halfway through the academic quarter, I became terribly constipated for an entire week and had to go to urgent care for prescription laxatives.
Butt naked in the Philadelphia Film Society bathroom, with no period, laxative-induced diarrhea poops, and a $120 bill to AFC Urgent Care, I knew that something had to change. I couldn’t let my body collapse in on itself because my mind could not derive the mathematical formula for the supply of Colombia’s coffee beans. Honestly, I don’t even care about Colombia. Viva Mexico, foo.
With a week left in the class and a final exam looming in the distance, I have accepted the limitations of my logic and submitted myself to the constraints of the problem; the constraints being that I am simply a student, not a sworn devotee. There is more to life than deadweight loss, and we should not lose ourselves in onerous attempts at mastery.
When you accept the limits of your efforts toward a certain craft, then you can redirect them into other trades and explore new talents, particularly less painful ones.
With finals quickly approaching, I hope that you, too, can find some time for yourself, and that you can feel a little less crappy about the things that did not turn out the way you wanted them to. Maybe calculus was not your cup of tea, so what? You can pick up a new hobby. Find a way to acknowledge the hardships endured, celebrate the hard work you have done, and hold your loved ones close this holiday break.