From Pain to Delight

True creativity changes something within us, and therefore creators feel the pain of creation. It severs a person from the familiar, comfortable place in which he is accustomed to live, and seeks to raise him to the next stage. Therefore Rav Kook calls it 'the sufferings of creation.' Every new thing that is truly born requires a person to give up something old within himself. Laziness, fear, habits, the need for control. But precisely there the depth of the delight begins. Not after the sufferings, but out of them. The soul finds its rest when it succeeds in passing through the constriction, the effort, the confusion, and the pain, and bringing forth from within itself new life. One who seeks only the inspiration without the toil, only the light without the refining – perhaps receives a beautiful idea, but not a new world. For creation is also the rebirth of the creator himself.