-By Ayushman Sinha
There was something heavy in the air, like a quiet melancholy buzzing under the surface of our conversations, of our art, of our identities. An aesthetic of sadness and an appreciation for suffering became a yearning for the broken and burdened parts of us all. Pain became poetry; struggle became a badge of honor; and despair was quilted into the very fabric of self-expression. Have we begun to worship the idea of suffering without trying to comprehend it? Have we committed a confusion between obscurity and depth? Have we, in our agony to make sense, fallen in love with our own doom?
Vulnerability was once an interior matter, something one struggled quietly within the chambers of the soul. It is currency now. Such artfully constructed sorrow fills social media: moody pictures brightened by dim light, pieces of poems disassembling the breakup, shares always dipped in existential dread. The world watches, likes, and shares. We learned to ingest the pain as entertainment when repackaging pain into art aesthetics that always demand one's attention but never truly require one to look within. We do not ask is this pain real or theatrical. We only know it looks artistic.
Imagine all of those Instagram stories drowning in raindrops on the windowpane, with a half-smoked cigarette hand, or some isolated silhouette lost in the light of the bright city lights, and all those speak in a hushed voice, a story of discomfort. They are not fake photographs but rather often serve as dramas or sensitive play between expression and indulgence. Are we seriously feeling the weight of the world or just too much in love with how great it feels to lose ourselves? When did sadness become this lingua franca everyone wanted to speak? When did angst become zeitgeist, a mood board, an identity?
For long, artists have drawn inspiration from suffering. Sylvia Plath, Vincent van Gogh, Kurt Cobain--icons of tragic genius whose pain became unmistakably married to their art. But this idea that the modern world has stolen and watered down means that one only needs to seem broken instead of created to interpret to endure. One isn't required to fight for meaning or to battle through the storm, but merely look as if the storm is consuming you.
The 'tortured soul' archetype has been commodified and repackaged into Tumblr posts and melancholic Spotify playlists. We find nobility in sadness, as if suffering is a definition of profundity, interest, worthiness. But isn't this dangerous? To equate depth with despair is to tell us that the joy of it all is superficial, that anyone at peace isn't really very wise. A lie we have whispered to ourselves so long we've come to believe it to be true. And once we start believing it, we start dressing up our misery with pride and confuse our injuries for wisdom and our battles for power.
Hypersensitivity is now superseded by sensitivity, and instead of being unaware of ourselves, we are attempting to dissect ourselves under the scanning antennae of our own sight. The interminable brooding about one's life and soul are passed off for wisdom. Those things that, until then, were merely a matter of melancholy and sadness that one's wounds overwhelmed, were now marked with emotional intelligence and not with something deeper unrest. The more we speak about suffering, the more it seems expected. The more we identify ourselves with our struggle, the less we allow ourselves to pass through them.
But we idealize it; we do not heal. We really sit with it, nurse it, and let it define us. And there is that unstated fear: if we let go of our suffering, we might lose ourselves as well-as we've become-without our suffering. Who are we without our sadness? What remains when the ache is gone? If we let go of our pain, do we let go of ourselves?
We scroll endearingly for quotes breaking up, read songs that scream of loneliness as their anthems, and wrap ourselves in narrations that echo that the measure of how profound a person must be is about the depth one has suffered; happiness is dully portrayed like naivety, as to find glee is to forget life's mysteries and not actually understand them. What if we got this wrong? What if real depth comes not from wallowing in sorrow but from the courage to get beyond it?
There is a reason for pain; it teaches, transforms, and reveals. But there's a difference between acknowledging struggle and idolizing it. True depth is not in the performance of suffering but the wisdom that comes through moving through it. Strength isn't in staying but in overcoming. No shame in healing. No betrayal in happiness.
Perhaps we cannot let go of our pain, as it has actually become a part of our story. We have stories to tell about ourselves. Our story defines us as who we are. A good character arc for anyone is suffering. It adds weight to the value and importance of our lives. Still, pain is not all the story. Quiet strength appears in joy, and deep wisdom in peace. It is not the end of our battles but a celebration of proving them wrong in defining us to embrace happiness.
Maybe we need to redefine our stories. Seek meaning in healing more so than wounds. Celebrate more the strength to rise again and not wallow in sorrow. See depth in not only dark but all the shades that make human existence. Not an act of treachery towards the past is to leave it behind, but rather a must-have development from it.
Not everything profound has to be colored in shades of gray. Sometimes the biggest revelation is when the light comes streaming through the walls. Perhaps we can be most courageous by entering it.
The world is heavy, suffering real. But we don't have to wear wounds as armor. We don't have to pin ourselves to pain just to prove our depth. The most radical thing we can do in a world that romanticizes despair is heal—and know that there's poetry in that too.
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