The myth of the artist who goes insane is a common and ancient trope as old as humanity itself. We all know the stories. Vincent Van Gogh is the most famous example of an artist whose creative life drove him to psychosis, alienation from his loved ones, and eventually suicide.
In ancient times, the artist was considered a kind of visionary who touched the mystical realms beyond ordinary human knowledge. This knowledge was considered dangerous and potentially deadly to the person who dared to partake in the nectar of the gods.
These experiences required the artist to withdraw from ordinary human society, isolate himself, and left him marked and changed so that he could never fully return to normal.
I hear this repeated all the time. People say these things about artists and people say the same thing about entrepreneurs. Even high-level, successful entrepreneurs advise their followers that you have to be a little bit crazy to be successful—or maybe even very crazy.
People who believe this only say it because they don’t understand the process. The normal person doesn’t understand what it takes to be a successful artist or a successful entrepreneur, so the normal person calls it crazy.
Artists and entrepreneurs share a few key features in common. Each one carries a vision in his or her head of something no one else can see or envision. Describing this vision to others who don’t share it usually ends in failure. Describing the vision doesn’t do it justice. Describing it in words doesn’t communicate the scope and importance of the vision in a way that gets the other person to support the vision and see how truly great it can be.
This is where the listener usually responds with something like, “You’re crazy.”
The fact that the artist or entrepreneur holds this vision alone usually requires them to isolate themselves and work on the project without help from anyone else.
The artist or entrepreneur usually dedicates considerable time, effort, and mental focus to the project. This requires the artist or entrepreneur to choose working on the project at the expense of other activities the world, society, and their loved ones consider “normal”.
Outsiders don’t understand why the project would be so important to the person. Outsiders don’t see why this project would be more important to the person than other, normal activities or spending time with friends and family.
Outsiders don’t understand why the artist or entrepreneur has to agonize, struggle, and sacrifice for something most people consider a pastime.
Painting, writing, playing music, dancing—most people consider these hobbies. Most people consider these the things you do for fun. Most people don’t understand why someone would want to deliberately turn these activities into a source of stress by getting serious about them.
The artist’s path is a lonely path. Each individual has to struggle with their craft and with the process itself. Each artist or entrepreneur has to deconstruct and reconstruct the process many times in order to build something that works long-term. Each artist or entrepreneur has to build the daily habits that will carry the process to their end goal, whatever that might be.
This process is usually far more difficult than the activity itself. Sure, any of us can engage in some artistic pursuit for the fun of it. Any of us can treat these activities as hobbies, pastimes, or a source of relaxation.
Getting serious about them and developing goals to bring a vision to fruition—that’s where the process becomes a challenge. No one can share that challenge with us. Each of us has to fight that battle alone.
Outsiders who don’t share our vision don’t understand this process. They don’t understand why we need to make it more difficult for ourselves. They don’t see what we’re trying to accomplish. They don’t see why this would be more important than the rest of the world around us.
It’s easy for someone outside our own thoughts to misunderstand and label us as crazy. This alienation can often become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The loved ones or outsiders might distance themselves from what they perceive as insanity. The loved ones might push the artist farther away which leads to further alienation and other mental health crises.
Artists and entrepreneurs are not crazy. They don’t have to go crazy. They’re just taking a different path in life—a path most people don’t take.
Sometimes just labeling someone or oneself as an artist can help a lot in making sense of what’s happening to us. The artist’s path gives us a framework to understand why we’re doing things this way, why we’re acting like this, and why it’s necessary for us to think and behave differently from the rest of society.
Calling ourselves artists normalizes what we’re doing—both to ourselves and others. It explains why we might spend years or decades not fitting in and struggling to find our place in society—a place that makes sense within the larger context of what we’re trying to accomplish.
The artist’s angst usually persists until the person’s art starts to earn them enough money to support the person’s lifestyle. The successful artist doesn’t usually lose that angst until they receive society’s acknowledgment that their art is valuable.
This acknowledgment comes in the form of money. Your mother telling you that your art is good means nothing. A stranger on the street telling you your art is good means nothing.
Praise means nothing until someone is actually prepared to exchange their hard-earned dollars for your art. Then and only then can the artist believe that their art is good enough, valuable enough, and worth the investment of time, effort, supplies, and mental energy.
The money the artist earns provides tangible evidence that their art is valuable to society and that the person is contributing something meaningful and necessary to society at large.
The artist usually has to go through years or decades of lonely struggle to get to this point. The artist usually has to go through years or decades of asking themselves, “Why am I even doing this?” It’s a difficult, heartbreaking, painful road that can sap the life out of anyone.
The artist’s path is daunting enough to drive anyone to insanity. The art itself doesn’t drive the artist crazy. It’s society’s reaction to the artist that breaks so many people or just outright makes them give up and quit the path altogether.
The problem is that the artist can’t give up and quit. The drive to create keeps living in the person’s soul. It eats away at them and can cause as much misery and alienation as the artist’s path itself—if not more.
An artist giving up and quitting is more likely to go crazy and destroy themselves as the artist who forges ahead and follows the path to its end. Society, loved ones, and the world at large is even less understanding and forgiving of the artist who capitulates as it is toward the artist who continues to strive along the path.
If you quit, no one will understand why you’re suffering. No one will understand or even care why these feelings, desires, and impulses are eating you alive from the inside and.
People can understand the artist much better as long as these people have a context to put the artist in. People can understand as long as they see you painting, playing music, writing, or doing whatever form of art moves you to create it. It’s much easier for people to say, “Oh, he’s an artist. That’s why he’s acting like this,” even if you never become successful.
No one will respect you if you don’t actually produce something. They’ll just see you as weak and miserable. At least our society has a concept of what the artist is and what the artist has to do to pursue his craft.
You’re going to suffer either way. You’re either going to suffer the hardships of the artist’s path or you’re going to suffer the shame of quitting and leaving all your inner wisdom unexpressed. The choice is yours.
You will feel much less alienated, alone, and different if you follow the artist’s path with all your heart and all your effort. People will understand you better and give you much more grace if they see you at least trying to create your art.
If you don’t pursue your art, then you become nothing. You become a drone like all the others. You give up your very soul—for nothing. You get nothing if you quit. You come to the end of your life with nothing to show for it.
The artist’s path is hard. I won’t lie to you about that. It never gets easier even after you become successful and your art starts paying all your bills. That’s everyone’s dream job, but it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem of an artist wrestling with his craft. That never goes away.
It sure does beat the alternative, though. Accept the fact that you don’t really have a choice in this. The alternative is living death. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life staggering toward your grave as an undead, zombified corpse.
The artist’s path is the only way to truly live your life and express your authentic self openly to the world. This is the only way anyone will ever be able to truly accept you for who you are because this is the only way anyone will ever be able to truly see you for who you really are.
Hiding your authentic self makes it impossible for anyone to truly know you. This is the quickest, surest way to alienate yourself from the whole human race. It’s the quickest way to destroy yourself, your life, your relationships, and what could be a big, beautiful, glorious legacy if you just expressed yourself.
Far more lives have been destroyed by avoiding living an authentic life than have been destroyed along the artist’s path.
Do yourself, your family, and future generations a massive favor and choose the lesser of two evils. People might call you crazy at first. Later, they’ll call you a genius and shower you with praise. They’ll call you courageous, real, and gifted.
The alternative is that people will call you nothing. They might not call you crazy, but they won’t call you anything else, either. They’ll completely forget that you ever existed.
That sounds like my idea of Hell. It’s the worst fate a person can suffer in this life—and it is definitely not what any of us came to this world to do.
I hope this helped someone. God bless you all.
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