From Susan Cain, talking about Leonard Cohen and creating art -
There's the taking of something painful and turning it into something else. In terms of how to live, that's the real insight this tradition (art) gives us. Because it's saying to us these moments are going to come, these pains are going to come. And you have two choices of what to do with them. You can suppress it in some way, and inevitably you're going to take it out on yourself in the form of depression, or addiction, or whatever it is, or you are going to take it out on someone else in the form of abuse or passive aggression. Or, you can take those pains and sit with them somehow and make meaning out of them. And it's something we do so naturally.