I've mentioned that I see creativity as self-expression, but that doesn't mean that I see every creative work as containing a deliberate message from creator to audience. Certainly, though, many of them do... and some of the most highly-regarded works are ones that impart a particular lesson or moral onto the viewer.
This is what I used to strive for in my own work, and... well, instinctually I think I still do, and I have my reasons for it. But it's also something I'm trying to change.
Let's start with why I used to aim to impart lessons in my work. I attribute it to a few things, most of them related to my upbringing--whether cultural or familial.
Though my parents ostensibly left the church at some point during their adulthood, both of them were raised in families with a deep history of Protestantism, and I don't think they were able to escape from the associated cultural values as much as they probably wanted to believe they did. They raised me to prioritize work over play, to limit emotional exploration. I'm told I explain things well; a lot of this is because I couldn't get my mom to really hear anything I said unless I cut the to point and said only exactly what I needed to say to get an idea across.
But it wasn't just my parents, it was my own inclinations, too. I've dealt with hard emotions for a long time, and due to the limits I felt in talking through those emotions with others, I looked to creative works to help me figure out what to do with these emotions. So the works that provide clear and deliberate answers in that regard were the works I was most grateful to see, to help inform my own thoughts and actions in real life.
And when I was growing up with no friends, I struggled to think of what I could do to justify my value as a person... and concluded that the most I could ever do was to create my own works with lessons for others to learn from. It also felt like the only way to make anything good out of all the bad feelings I had was to take the lessons I learned from those experiences and share them with others, so that others wouldn't have to go through the same things I did.
And one of the ways I dealt with all the pain I saw in the world, in general, was in trying to find solutions for how to stop those painful things from happening. It felt to me... or at least I wanted to believe... that a lot of the harm people caused was due to ignorance and misunderstanding, rather than selfishness or malice. So I wanted to believe that if I was able to encapsulate the truths of the world in a format that could easily be understood by anyone, some amount of healing could begin.
...I uh, I don't look at it that way anymore.
There's so many reasons why... I don't know if I could even summarize them. It's hard for me to hold a traditionally utilitarianist view of morality when I no longer view "happiness" as a binary concept (I think there are several different types of happiness, some of which conflict with each other). In other words, emotions are too complex to break down into singular rules to follow... and even if they could be, not everyone is in a position to learn or comprehend every possible piece of information they'd need in order to make consistently ideal decisions... in fact, most people aren't built to comprehend most of it, and I do include myself in that statement.
More importantly, though, at this point I've come to realize how much harm comes from assuming that a perfect set of ideals even exists. In assuming this, and trying to understand these ideals and impart them on others, I was taking on the responsibility of being leader to the entire world. This is power that no single person can have nor should have. To state it more harshly, I subconsciously bought into the idea that it was my right, my ability, and my responsibility to do this as an (assumed) cishet white man.
When I was in this state of mind, I was more inclined to believe that a universal solution to a problem automatically had more value that any individual specific and contextual solution to the same problem. That even if a solution made sense to someone else, if it didn't make sense to me, that meant it couldn't be a universal solution, and wasn't worth learning from or incorporating more deeply into my own beliefs. That if a solution didn't make everyone happy, then it wasn't worth using, and it was better to default to the status quo until a more universal solution could be found.
Again, I don't look at it that way anymore. In spite of the above truths, I think I've always loved people who embrace their individuality and weirdness over trying to fit some arbitrary standard (and the standard is always arbitrary), and I'm trying to do more to embody that truth nowadays. I'm also all for overthrowing systems that don't work and trying something different, even if not everyone agrees to it. Transitioning has helped me become more intimately aware of these things, and has allowed me to remove the mantle of "attempted world leader" from myself and just be myself in all my weirdness--which, as it turns out, is a more straightforward road to happiness than any objective set of rules.
So... I want to learn to do the same with my creations, as well. I just haven't had much practice with it yet. And I have some trouble finding a road to do it.
I'm still inclined to frame things in terms of collections of truths. And it's not that I want to move away from that. Truths are still good. It's just also worth recognizing the difference between a truth and an assumed standard.
And if I put together a series of truths that don't go anywhere... I tend to feel like I'm wasting people's time. Or if I line up a series of truths that lead to a dead end, not only do I feel like I'm wasting people's time, I feel like I'm being ungrateful towards reality for not being what I want it to be, instead of working to find my own answers within that reality.
...But you know, maybe reality should be criticized. Maybe the only answers allowed by reality are really shitty ones.
And I want to believe that, just as no one should have to justify their own existence, I shouldn't have to justify my creations' existence, either. That they can just be what they are and still have value just for existing. And I want to believe that of everyone else's creations, too... Well, with that always-present caveat of "so long as it's not causing undue harm", and trying to explain what that means is a whole philosophical branch unto itself. Which means it runs the risk of arguing for another arbitrary standard.
I'm learning to let my feelings exist within this world even if--maybe especially because--I don't have all the answers. And I hope I can help you do the same.