Long read: The Divine Discontent

There’s been a school of thought which sees the pursuit of perfectionism as a trap that inevitably leads to dissatisfaction and unhappiness. This piece gives a slightly different take on the subject. Indeed, it says attaining ‘fulfilment’ requires us to pursue activities particularly in the creative field, that leave you dissatisfied. It is called divine discontent, a term used by several thinkers through history, most recently and famously by David Ogilvy, often referred to as the “father of advertising”.

“The most fulfilled people I know tend to have two traits. They’re insatiably curious—about new ideas, experiences, information and people. And they seem to exist in a state of perpetual, self-inflicted unhappiness.

These people tend to have a project they’re working on. An essay. A poem. They’re reading Wittgenstein for the first time. Or rereading Proust. They’re rehearsing for a dance performance. Learning about carbon capture technologies. Making a track in Ableton. Knitting a jumper. Testing out a new recipe. Improving their Cantonese. Taking a painting class…

They’re serious about the project, although they may exhibit some self-consciousness, some hesitancy, about how badly they want it to go well. If you catch them on a good day, they’re full of freshness and vigor and excitement—an infectious enthusiasm that makes you a little more lighthearted, and a little more excited about whatever projects you have in your life. But if you catch these people on a bad day—well. I’m stuck, they’ll say. The project’s not going well. I’m not getting any better at this. It’s not as good as I want it to be.

And if you take this dissatisfaction at face value, it may seem as if the project is the problem. Why do they want to write so badly, if they’re always complaining about it? And when their keen curiosity leads them to discover better writers, artists, thinkers, musicians—that’s when they became painfully, overwhelmingly aware of how far they are from achieving greatness. What’s the point of taking piano lessons if you’ll never be Glenn Gould?

But it’s this restless pursuit of greatness, even when they feel demoralized and inadequate, that shapes their lives and makes things interesting.”

The author talks about the experiences of various practitioners especially in the creative field on this subject before tackling the flip side of the argument:

“But living like this—with a constant, compulsive awareness of your flaws—can be tiring! The divine discontent can easily tip over into self-hatred and paralyzing perfectionism. How can you be someone with a project, with ambitions, with taste and aspirations…and not make yourself wildly, neurotically unhappy?

It’s especially hard when you’re just beginning to work on your craft. “I love to study the beginnings of things,” Tharp writes in The Creative Habit. “The first steps are the most interesting ones—when you’re just beginning to find your way into a problem, whether it’s artistic or philosophical…when you don’t yet know what you’re trying to solve and how you’re going to solve it.” It’s an exciting time, and a terrifying one. Even for an accomplished choreographer! In another Q&A in the book, Tharp writes:

At what moments do you feel your reach exceeds your grasp?
I always, always feel that at the start. But you get lucky now and again, so I reach anyway. That’s why I study beginnings, so I can deal with those fears.

Tharp’s words resonate with another well-known quote, from the radio producer Ira Glass, on feeling disappointed by your own work:

All of us who do creative work…get into it because we have good taste. But there’s a gap. For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making…It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good…[but] your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you…

Everybody I know who does interesting creative work…went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short.

If you’ve trained your taste on great works, it’s disappointing to realize what you’re capable of: Dull, impoverished, and painfully mediocre imitations. It’s easy to give up at this point. But Glass exhorts us, instead, to keep on going. That feeling of disappointment? “Everybody goes through that,” Glass notes. And the correct response is to

Do a lot of work — do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.

In short: Practice. Start projects. Finish them. Persist through the terrible work, the inadequate execution, the failures.”

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