Creativity Quote by Holly Near

Wonder, in Holly Near's telling, isn't a cute personality trait; it's a nervous system setting. "Always" is the giveaway: this isn't the occasional goosebump at a good song or a sunset, but a near-constant permeability to the world. For a working musician and activist who came up alongside feminist and anti-war movements, that permeability is both fuel and hazard. The same sensitivity that makes you catch beauty others miss also makes you absorb cruelty others can file away and forget.

The line works because it refuses the tidy, Instagram version of awe. Near frames wonder as "a kind of sensitivity", not a virtue. That phrasing subtly medicalizes it, as if wonder is less a chosen attitude than a condition you live with, like heightened hearing. And then she splits the bill: "extraordinary blessing" and "real pain". Not "challenge" or "hard", but pain - physical, unavoidable, unromantic. It's an honest admission from someone whose art depends on staying open, even when openness hurts.

The intent feels like permission. For people who are easily moved, Near isn't telling you to toughen up; she's naming the cost so you can stop treating it like a personal failure. The subtext is that sensitivity is often misread as fragility, when it's really a form of exposure: you stand closer to the edge of experience. In a culture that prizes cool detachment, Near argues for the messy economics of feeling too much - and still choosing to keep feeling.