Suffering is the gap between imagination and reality

We suffer because we have the ability to imagine. Imagination is essentially a creative act, where an impulse moves us from what is, to what could be. This act of imagination creates an imagined reality which we begin to yearn for. When that imagined reality doesn’t match our present life, suffering ensues. Understanding the relationship between suffering and creativity can help us accept and eventually transcend suffering.

This capacity to imagine springs from a deeper creative impulse. This creative impulse makes us creatures who yearn. The trouble begins when we project this impulse outward onto the external world of objects and relationships, demanding that they conform to our desires. As most of know, this compounds suffering – because the external is inherently beyond our control.

But what if we reclaimed that creative impulse and took responsibility for its expression, instead of waiting for the world to deliver it?

Imagine we value a tidy home, but our partners are messy. Most of us begin to complain that we do not have a neat home because of our partner. If we can instead, turn around and say, “Having a clean home is important to me, so I will do my best to keep it clean”, then we begin to disengage our creative energies from the other and bring it back to ourselves. This is the beginning of freedom. This doesn’t mean that we do not have expectations of others. We do. We stop outsourcing the responsibility for our creative impulse. So many relationships, so much suffering comes about because we impose the responsibility of the expression of our creative impulse on the other.

The more we take ownership of our values – the expression of our creative impulses – the less life becomes a series of frustrations. Disappointments will still arise, but they do not ferment into suffering. The focus shifts from demanding that life meet our needs to discovering how to express those needs within life’s constraints. We move from being idealistic to being practical. We move from being irritable and disappointed to being light and easy.

Our suffering, then, comes from a positive place – a longing to create. If we can sit with it and ask, “What do you truly want?” and then, “How can I move toward it?” we turn desire into action. Some efforts succeed, some fail—but we begin to see that the result matters less than the act of expression itself. In that shift, suffering loses its grip. What remains is the freedom and fulfillment of being human.