Hmm, this advice seems innocuous enough at first glance, but I’m not sure artistic exploration is for everyone. This isn’t because many people can’t learn how to produce art. Of course they can. It’s not magic. Anyone could practice writing or any other art and improve his or her skills.

The question that bothers me, which I’ve taken up in some articles, is whether everyone or perhaps even anyone _should_ go into the arts. Don’t get me wrong: art is of great social value, but it may cost the artist a lot to produce it. It’s no accident that many writers, painters, and musicians turn to alcohol or are fuelled by mental illness. Creativity may be subversive, and the inner exploration needed to generate art that taps into the unconscious has psychological and social costs.

In the case of writing that’s valuable because it tells the deepest truths, the cost is that those truths may be unpopular, so confronting them can be burdensome. Artists may end up sacrificing themselves and suffering for their art, and that’s so even for those who succeed to the point of being famous since fame brings its own downside.

Perhaps that conception verges on Romantic exaggeration, but there seems to me a kernel of truth in it, at least. In that case, we might be more circumspect in recommending that everyone should take up an art like writing. There’s mental discipline beyond the mere craft that’s needed, a kind of willingness to sacrifice the ego and an antisocial obsession with mastering the craft that might be counterproductive if practiced by everyone.