Judge Journeys, Not Destinations: Creating Through the Mess

I see a beautiful painting and immediately compare it to the mess on my own easel—the false starts, the overworked sections, the moments of doubt when I nearly threw it away. The finished piece I’m admiring reveals nothing of its creator’s struggle, yet I judge my messy process against their polished result.

We see others’ destinations and compare them to our journey, forgetting that every masterpiece emerged from the same chaos we’re experiencing now.

The published book doesn’t show the author’s months of staring at blank pages. The gallery exhibition hides the artist’s pile of failed experiments. We consume the edited highlights of others’ creativity while intimately knowing our own rough drafts, mistaking the final product for the complete creative experience.

When Arash shows me a drawing, he points out everything wrong with it before I can appreciate what’s right. Already, at eleven, he’s learned to see his work through imagined critical eyes rather than his own authentic vision.

The inside of creativity is always messier than its outside presentation. We know our own uncertainty, false starts, and abandoned attempts. But others share only their successes, creating the illusion that everyone else’s creative process flows smoothly while ours stumbles through confusion.

This comparison kills more art than any critic could. We abandon projects because they don’t match others’ finished works, forgetting that those works once looked exactly like our current struggles.

The tragedy isn’t that we compare—it’s that we compare incomparable things. Their polished results versus our raw process. Their years of practice versus our recent beginning. Their public success versus our private efforts.

Real courage means judging our work by our own standards, measuring today’s attempt against yesterday’s, celebrating the mess that leads to meaning.