The Journey Towards Inconvenience
Amidst his swirling paintbrush, Vincent van Gogh battled his own artistic demons.
Locked in his studio, van Gogh felt his mind crashing down on him. His brush strokes hesitating and his fragile hands shaking. “One more stroke,” he whispered, desiring to capture the essence of his vision. But the canvas resisted, and so did his efforts.
Throughout his life, van Gogh encountered difficulty in gaining recognition and financial stability. His work struggled to find an audience, and no one gave a hoot about what he doing. But in 1890, French art dealer Julien “Père” Tanguy stumbled across van Gogh’s work. There and then, the legacy of Starry Night was born.
Starry Night (1890) by Vincent van Gogh, sold for $100 million
All the years of hard work had finally meant something.
That was the reality of working as a painter back in the day without Photoshop or Tilt Brush. Every brush stroke, every dap of paint, every mix of colour had to fit in at the right place. Leaving it to dry beyond necessity would result in disaster. Any miscalculation would come with the tearing of canvas, followed by a hoop into the bin. This cycle would repeat as long as it took. A single 10 by 10 art work could take at least six months to a year to complete.
Beauty, in the eyes of van Gogh, didn’t care for no one. It was that or nothing. But he was willing to give it his all. It was an inconvenient profession that provided the fulfilment.
But by today’s standard, such experiences would be almost non-existent. Majority would opt for the more efficient, immersive experiences of the digital world. Don’t like it? Reset and redo with a click. Bored? Right-click save as, come back when you feel like it. I wondered if van Gogh had lived in 2020s instead of the 1800s, would his life have had any meaning?
Wise machines humans should make wise decisions
Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, once said, “Convenience decides everything.”
Fast-food, washing machines, transport, doorstep delivery services, tweets or a WhatsApp text message. Convenience seems to undertake almost every decision-making process for us. Not to mention the current hype of ChatGPT and the sea of AI-powered apps. Our children are now turning to algorithms to decide what we like or dislike.
It’s almost as if we forget that we’re capable of making decisions.
“Convenience has the ability to make other options unthinkable”, writes Tim Wu, and to “resist convenience — not to own a cellphone, not to use Google — has come to require a special kind of dedication that is often taken for eccentricity, if not fanaticism”.
Put a nicer way: you’re weird if you reject a life of convenience.
Whenever people ask me about my time in Japan, my response is always the same: it’s different when you’re there as a tourist or for work.
Since we were only going to live there for a year, buying a car would seem like a dumb investment choice. Our beach house was at least a 25-minute walk to the subway station or a 10-minute walk to the nearest bus stop. Getting around with an active toddler was a struggle at least, sufferance at most.
Owning a car would have made my life easier and my parenting journey more enjoyable.
On the economic side of things, convenience drives individual decisions and shapes the modern economy. We’ve seen it all among the tech industries: the battle for convenience is the battle for dominance, as Wu spells it — “the easier it is to use Amazon, the more powerful Amazon becomes, and thus the easier it becomes to use Amazon”.
I’m not suggesting convenience as a bad thing. It does not make us evil; more often it opens up new possibilities and makes life attainable, especially for those facing insurmountable challenges, or for families struggling to raise a bunch of wild kids.
But we’re giving it more credit than it deserves. I always wondered what our fixation with it was doing to our society and how it’s shaping our children for the future.
A sum of hard and illogical things
Convenience often masquerade as avoiding hardships and making life simple. Sometimes, a little too simple, till the point we forget we are human.
The path of least resistance is basic human psychology and a mantra for mankind. And with this simplicity comes a liberation from the perils of not being able to do what we’ve always wanted to due to our school or work schedules.
But presuming convenience is always good is nothing more than a toxic mindset to model for your children. And the thing about toxicity is it erodes whatever it touches.
As tasks get easier, the desire for convenience increases, pushing everything else to reflect a similar difficulty setting, or risk being neglected. Instant gratification becomes the motivation of our actions, and frustration creeps in like a persistent mosquito when your kids attempt to produce the same amount of effort and time as before.
And this is where Robert Greene’s definition of creativity hits the spot: the sum of a lot of tedious work.
“If you don’t have to struggle a little, you’re not growing. If you always pick up the same pound weights, your muscles don’t get stronger. If you always run at the same pace, you don’t get faster. If you always play the same three chords, you don’t get better at playing the guitar”, writes Billy Oppenheimer.
And if you kids aren’t exercising their creativity, an innate human characteristic, it becomes a fad that gives no meaning.
So true human creativity, in a sense, develops when the amount of inconvenience you choose to pursue for your child increases with time. The greats didn’t start as greats: they shared similar experiences to van Gogh’s early years before they broke through the ceiling and achieved the standard they’re known for today. Struggling, with a tinge of inconvenience, leads to the convenience portrayed from their craft.
Natalie, 6 years old, decked in vibrant colours during our holiday programme, Tourist For A Day.
The nemesis of creativity
While embracing inconvenience may seem peculiar, you and your kids often do so unconsciously. They are disguised as hobbies and passions.
Since becoming a mother, my life has undergone a profound transformation. Deciding what to eat for lunch no longer plague my mind (yes that was how superficial I was); 90% of my thoughts are my son and him alone. Fear of him getting injured, struggling to form friendships or meaningful connections. I contemplate if he might veer off the righteous path, struggle in school, or make irreparable mistakes he’ll come to regret.
But amongst all, my biggest fear is for my son to lack passion and purpose in life.
And at the crux of pursuing convenience, comes the greatest villain of your child’s creative life — conformity— that attempts to group every kid together on a cookie cutter platter.
"Be like everyone else, follow the system. Don't go out of line" is a terrible thing to tell your children. The nemesis of creativity. Thus, embarking on a journey towards inconvenience will be counter-intuitive, uncomfortable and at times, frowned upon. To maximise creativity, your children must break free from the forces of society - the convenient life - to stand out in this ultra-competitive world.
Because that’s what super creative humans do.
The not-so short of it?
The long and arduous walks to the subway station were no doubt challenging. But I could greet my neighbours and wave at the little children making their way to school.
Walking on the uneven and rocky path towards the bus stop was challenging. But it led me to witness the transformation of nature with the seasons and smell the aroma.
By taking the inconvenient route, I could observe the waves, feel the wind, and walk under circling hawks. By being with the physical surroundings, I encountered things that I would have otherwise missed.
10-month old Maxime with a new friend we made along the way to the subway station
Today’s cult of convenience fails to acknowledge that difficulty is part and parcel of life. Convenience is all destination and no journey. But climbing a mountain is different from taking the tram to the top, even if you end up at the same place. We are becoming people who care only about outcomes. We are at risk of making most of our life experiences a series of trolley rides.
Convenience is all destination and no journey - whenever I read this statement by Wu, I would nudge myself and think, can’t we all enjoy the journey?
Inconvenience is not always a good thing, but good things are often on the other side of a little inconvenience. It will take your children a great deal of time to pursue their hobbies and passions - precious time away from traditional academics - but they also give us time back, not in ways money, exam scores or convenience can.
Effort-for-effort ROI may not seem attractive at first, but it sure would, if implemented correctly, foster the skills for a future that demands supreme levels of creativity, imagination and problem solving.
Let's journey towards inconvenience.
Be well,
Miss G (@gladyssoh)
