🌱 The pain behind beauty

Creativity, chaos, and the beauty that comes from both

Mitchell Cohen
September 28, 2025

Welcome to all the new homies who joined this week!

Grab a seat and let’s dive in.

Here’s your 3 insights in 3 minutes.

Johnny Cash was one of the most prolific artists of all time.

Over 1,000 songs, 100 albums, and a career that spanned five decades.

But my favorite quote of his isn’t a lyric…it’s about his creative process:

“Creative people have to be fed from the divine source. I have to get fed. I have to get filled up in order to pour out.”

He didn’t brute-force his work, yet still published 100 albums. (Bonkers.)

Instead, he filled himself up — with walks in the woods, faith, and letting ideas marinate.

Then, when the spark came, he poured it out fast.

And here’s the twist: Johnny wasn’t some calm, Zen monk.

He was wild.

He struggled with drinking, drugs, arrests, and near-death experiences. Yet somehow, he still managed to create timeless music.

That tension reminds me of a line from Carl Jung:

“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”

In other words, growth requires confronting the darker parts of ourselves.

Cash lived this:

He walked the line — between sinner and saint, chaos and clarity.

Maybe that’s the real lesson: your art, your growth, your impact come not in spite of your struggles, but because of how you integrate them.

Or as Bob Dylan wrote:

“Behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain.”

Dylan’s lyrics are poetic (check out the lyrics here or song here).

Cash lived it. Jung explained it. Dylan sang it.

Salud,
Mitchell