Some people like to brainstorm and innovate, create and imagine, but are not comfortable when reality sets in, i.e., when actual effort needed is much higher than expected. They realize that actual costs are higher, time required is higher, they have mess to clean up and finishing touches to be placed. They realize every stakeholder has a different interest, and even every team member has other concerns of greater priority to him. Especially for some creatives, they can become uncomfortable when their idea becomes another’s, when it has been changed to become something very different from the inspired idea.

It might appear that most people may be called “dreamers” with respect to some issues, and “realists” with respect to others. I do not think it’s that simple. Rather, we always see outside realities through a subjective lens. This is why two observers of the same event will have different interpretations of it. The same person will interpret an event differently depending on his emotional state, and will interpret differently depending on his will.

That’s more or less what I got from a brief introduction to Schopenhauer.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a German philosopher best known for his work The World as Will and Representation, in which he characterizes the phenomenal world — the world in our head — as the product of will. Most people consider him a pessimist because, pondering on the subjects of loneliness, solitude, boredom, he concluded that only pain was real and true happiness was the absence of pain.

Schopenhauer may have been extreme in saying the outside world has little to no value outside of a negative, but our thoughts do matter a lot. Happy or sad, your thoughts determine your behavior, and your behavior changes your world.

How, then, do we change thought?

Schopenhauer’s answer: detach yourself especially from selfish desire. For as long as it is conscious, this Will that is inside us will always seek self preservation and will always be frustrated. Therefore, the only way to be free from frustration is annihilation. As this is not practical, we opt for something like it that is: asceticism, and failing that, compassion.

As Steve Magness wrote, Do Hard Things. Don’t purchase everything you fancy, and don’t quit too easily. Be generous to others, but don’t be too soft on yourself.

Although it doesn’t look like a Schopenhauer tool, Zen meditation serves a similar annihilating purpose. The Zen practitioner removes all thought at least for the time he is meditating. Whether he is sitting in meditation or practicing flower arrangement or making a sword, the practitioner is focused on the present. By staying there, he annihilates two common distractions: worry, which is thinking in the past; and anxiety, which is thinking in the future. In a duel, a samurai does not think about dying, but only about cutting. It doesn’t serve the samurai to be worried or anxious about outcomes.

Schopenhauer may have said that happiness is not real. So what? Pleasure and pain are like chiascuro in painting. Pain is not to be avoided at all costs. Neither is it to be sought for its own sake. It can be experienced with resignation, or chosen. No pain, no gain.

Is there useless pain? If you Will pain to be useful, it will be useful, even if you did not choose it. But if you set your Will against pain, Schopenhauer says you’ll always be frustrated. Schopenhauer’s pessimism at least to me is far from negative.

As a scientist, I aim to make life better through science. And I go through the pain of experimental failures, funding rejections, broken instruments, to get there. Everyone can say the same thing. It’s practically what makes a pro a pro: their ability to do, to persist donig hard things.

Even in Schopenhauer’s landscape, is there a position where the view is nothing but beautiful? No. Instead, in his and anyone’s landscape, if you remove all the shadows and grays, what interest would that landscape have? Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, a painting attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, is interesting not only because it is a beautiful painting of ships and farmers. But if you look at the lower right corner you will see Icarus drowning. Bruegel is telling us that tragedy is part of truth.

Well, he’s also saying that no one really cares about your drama, Icarus.

At least for us living, pain and pleasure may be a matter of where one stands. This suggests that seeing is itself an act of creation! Of course, we do not create the subject, but we create meaning by seeing what we see. A trained person draws more from the same experience as a novice. But the novice begins his path to expertise by exposure and feedback regarding what he saw.

Hence, the “expert’s perspective” businesses will pay millions for. It’s not their IQ, not their degrees. It’s their experience, sculpted, refined by criticism and dialogue. For this reason, it would be wrong to say, as many young people do, that all opinions are equal.

Sometimes the best one can do is to appreciate things from afar. Without research, without getting involved, without commitment. Because as we said, “spectating” is NOT doing NOTHING. Since a good part of reality is in our head, what we put in there is a product of work. Everything, therefore, matters. Looking at an Oreo may not be like looking at a Bruegel, but I once attended a show where the poet read out a shopping list in a truly inspired way.

There is very little one can do that is totally indifferent and ineffectual. But it would be a true pain if one never sought the benefit of conversation.