GREATNESS and DEFIANCE

(could i be the filipino spider-punk🕷️, fellas?)

I was discussing with my therapist about my role models, Da Vinci is a big one as of late, he was the greatest artist of his time, arguably the most important concept artist of all time, to me it is natural that as a concept artist I would want my creations to be as important as his to the world. But history recognizes artists not only for their arts or craft, they are recognized for their pain- some hurt themselves or cut their ears off while others dig up graves and desecrate the dead, they were tormented and society romanticized that, making it as if they were only great because of the fact that they were tormented, I believed this to be true, that greatness only had one lane, no forks in their path or divergence in that road, you had to walk through the pain in order to be great, I believed this because names in history proved time and time again that all these visionaries were tortured artists.

It felt like gaslighting when I was telling myself I either didn’t want to be great anymore or that if I were to be “great”, then I would be fine with working within the limitation of not torturing myself in order to be one of THE greats. It felt like gaslighting until my Therapist asked me what I thought it took to be great, the path of greatness according to me goes like this,

“In order to become great you have to become extreme. No one extraordinary has avoided extraordinary discomfort and pain, to be called crazy by the average person is just one minimum requirement you need to set yourself apart, suffering alone is what you must drive through the miles that becomes greatness.”

At the time I said it in a more undramatic way, much less thoughtful too, but it carried the same core idea. So my Therapist tells me that while what I said is a valid observation, it’s important that we choose ideas that help us live with ourselves- that was an Idea I could agree with. Then I was asked to re evaluate one thing- would it be crazy to defy the idea that you had to defy normality to be great? Would that in itself be an extreme defiance? It then hit me in a way that I hadn’t thought of before, but it felt like I had been leaving my heart open just to hear this, so that my defiance would be validated- I realized then, the greatest defiance is not to fit the mold of being extremely unkind to yourself in order to be great, it is that I can choose to be great without being unkind. My greatest inspirations in art were Stan Lee and Akira Toriyama, writers of spider-man and dragon ball respectively, they did not live without hardship but hardship was only a part of the better story they told with their time.

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