Sadness is a heavy topic. Everyone, at various stages of life, will feel sad about different things.
It is an eternal proposition—about life, about emotions, about relationships, about death...
Recently, I have been going through a period of sadness that is my own.
I believe that a person in a state of sadness cannot produce good work. Writing belongs only to the happy. Please note, my definition of a “happy person” does not refer to the naive, Pollyanna optimists who have never experienced pain. Rather, it refers to those who have already processed their own trauma and reached a state of inner integration and peace, thereby gaining clarity and creative freedom. Only they can revisit that pain through writing, this noblest and purest form.
Of course, many articles on Medium emphasize that truly profound content can only be created in the midst of the deepest sorrow. There are many examples that indeed prove this.
However, when you are truly confronting the sadness in your own life, as an ordinary person, it is actually very difficult to write something that resonates. Everyone’s pain is different. If you just keep reopening your own wounds, all others will see is a pile of complaints and trivialities.
Trauma and deep negative emotions require time to be processed and understood. Writing immediately from the eye of an emotional storm often produces chaotic, self-pitying, and short-sighted text. Great works are usually born from “emotion recollected in tranquility,” not from scribbling blindly in the torrent of emotion. Writing that lacks distance and reflection rarely produces the “insight” it claims to have.
Moreover, this practice—advocating that everything, from the death of a beloved pet to a near-death experience in the ICU, should be seen as an “opportunity” and “material”—is an extremely dangerous mindset.
When a person begins to see their deepest pain, sadness, and fear primarily as material for a future article, they become alienated from their own authentic emotional experience. You are no longer purely feeling grief; you are playing the role of a “future author who is feeling grief.”
This theory implies that the ultimate value of an experience lies in whether it can be converted into an “impactful” article. This completely misses the point. The pain of losing a house, the anxiety of losing an income—these are parts of life itself. Their meaning lies in teaching us humility, caution, and resilience.
Life does not exist for the sake of writing; writing exists for the sake of interpreting life.
Furthermore, much of our suffering is pure, meaningless pain with no “lesson,” no “turning point,” and no “growth.” We cannot turn a blind eye to it.
For the parents of a child slowly dying from a terminal illness, what “valuable lesson” is there in a “bad day” that can be written into a blog post to “help others”?
To forcibly seek “writing material” from such immense suffering is an offense and a disrespect to that pain.
And when the motivation for sharing vulnerability shifts from “seeking connection and self-healing” to “creating content that can attract traffic, build trust, and ultimately lead readers to buy my course,” the nature of that vulnerability changes.
Readers are not foolish. They can distinguish between a heartfelt sharing and a carefully curated marketing tool designed to build a “relatable” persona. The latter not only fails to build trust but will completely destroy it once seen through.
Therefore, I reiterate my conclusion: Writing, in its noblest and purest form, belongs to the happy.
A “happy” or internally peaceful author has “sovereignty” over his or her emotions. They can revisit a sad memory, examine it, and depict it, but they will not be consumed by it again. Their Self is stable, and emotions and memories are merely part of their creative toolkit, not the sole force that kidnaps them and compels them to write.
Only by breaking free from the immediate control of pain can a “happy” author engage in truly free creation.
Broad and profound insight requires a clear, undisturbed vision. A “happy” author’s mind is not shrouded in the “storm” of strong negative emotions (like anger, fear, or sadness), so they can see farther and more clearly. They are able to observe the subtleties of the world, the complexities of human nature, and the humor and absurdity in life—things that a person in pain has no capacity to notice.
An author suffering from a broken heart might write verses full of personal agony, which might resonate with others in the same situation. But an author with inner peace can write a great novel that explores the multiple forms of love, societal changes, and the universal weaknesses of humanity.
Their emotional state allows them to transcend the self and capture a grander, more truthful world. Pain makes writing inward-looking, while peace makes writing outward-looking.
The noblest creation is motivated by a pure desire to “give.” For a “happy” author, creation stems from an inner abundance and richness.
They write not because they need to fill an inner void or a bank account by selling their pain, but because they have so much they want to share with the world—an interesting story, a unique perspective, an experience of beauty.
Writing for the sake of pain is essentially an act of “taking,” of saying, “Please look at my pain, please understand me, please buy my solution.” But writing for the sake of joy is an act of “giving,” of saying, “I have seen the beauty/interest/profundity of this world, and now I offer it to you as a gift.” The art produced by the latter is undoubtedly more generous, pure, and trustworthy.
A “tortured artist” full of internal conflict and pain might produce astonishing fragments in a flash of inspiration, but they often lack the mental stamina required to complete a grand, structurally rigorous work. They will burn out.
So, if you are currently experiencing unspeakable sadness and pain, please do not rush to use it as raw material for consumption. Please, first, go deal with your life’s problems, get some counseling for yourself, and pull yourself out of the mire of suffering first.
Writing? That is the triumphal ode after you have conquered your pain.
The original text was not written in English. Gemini 2.5 Pro translated it.