The artist—the creator—scares Gods simply because he has no use for them. There is a voice; the voice never shuts up, and we must serve it, eventually. The world is not very helpful, all things considered, but the one thing it ensures is the death of the artist and the burgeoning of spineless idiots walking around, showing each other excuses in some embarrassing exchange. You can scream at the top of your lungs atop the seventh floor of a burning building, and no one dare stop to look up. But agree once with what they are selling, use the snake oil of personal mediocrity, and you shall be rewarded. Every time an artist sells his soul, every moment someone stops making art—vast meaning out of nothing—the world wins. We are at war, people like you and me; we are always at war with mediocrity. We must not let it breach our boundaries, and every moment we doubt our pen is an outpost lost.
I am no one to refute statistics. I am no one to deny the truly learned minds in the world. I am only a person like you and like so many others. I am no one to say the facts are wrong, and I am no one to say the odds are not against us. But in the end, no one sits on a chair facing the world on a balcony or a porch and says, “I am glad I trusted the word of the wise; I am glad I did not try at all.”
Ultimately, it will be your life, your magnificently unfulfilled life, and your incomplete identity will stare back at you as you sit and have your tea on the porch. Meaningless days leading to that very moment will have been spent and will continue.
But go ahead, hide behind your facts and figures, your charts and papers, and continue hiding. The chair of purposelessness, of loneliness, rocks in anticipation. The floor beneath it creaks and waits for you. In the end, it will be procrastination that wins. I am no one in front of the facts, but I will try regardless. I encourage you to fight back. The rest will happen as it does. It will make no difference in the grand scheme of things, but you will have tried. It will count for something when you sit there, staring. But it is up to you. Whether you try or not, in the end, nothing else remains.
But you will have tried.