The Pain is Worth It!

For our online prompt group, we were asked to flourish. A flourish is defined as “an ornamental flowing curve in handwriting or scrollwork”. I struggle with flourishing, so I spent hours writing ornamental lines and curves, trying to flourish as a natural extension of the lettering. I ended up not liking anything that I produced. Flourishing can be a very traditional part of lettering, and my work is not usually very traditional. So I stopped. I thought about the process of learning and began again with my own style, adding ornamental lines where I wanted not where they might traditionally form. I utilized this quote and it helped me understand the process.

Learning is not child’s play,
we cannot learn without pain.

– Aristotle 322 bc

Pain, not traditionally the first thing we think about when setting out to learn something new. There will be frustration, mistakes, confusion, fumbles, and even an occasional cuss word…but pain? HHHmmm. Indeed, there will be pain because learning forces us to step beyond our comfort zone, move from the known into the unknown, which means discomfort and anxiety. We may not bleed or break anything (let’s hope not!) yet there will be pain. Learning is not for sissies! It takes guts, gumption and courage.

So I lettered on and created this piece with more than a few attempts (four actually) until I got the words to fit the way I wanted with some forms of flourishing. The three ink drops were indeed drops from my pen…it just so happened that the third drop landed right above the “I” in without. I mean I’m good with splatters, not always THAT good!

So here’s to being open to pain. The pain that learning brings. It is a good pain, a productive pain, a pain that takes us on a journey from who we are to who we are becoming. If you think about all the things you know how to do, somewhere you did not know how to do those things and yet you do them now. So along your life’s adventures you have had pain, productive, positive, life changing pain.

Let me encourage you to dive right into pain to learn something new. To extend your current skills, brush off old skills, or even tackle something you’ve always dreamed of doing. Dare to endure the pain in order to get better than what and who you are today. Believe me, the pain will be worth it!