This Letter To An Aspiring Intellectual, By: Paul Griffiths is fantastic.
But I took out the word “intellectual(s)” out of the last paragraph and rewrote it below.
I replaced it with the word “writer(s).”
It could not be truer.
And lastly: Don’t do any of the things I’ve recommended unless it seems to you that you must. The world doesn’t need many writers. Most people have neither the talent nor the taste for writing, and most that is admirable and good about human life (love, self-sacrifice, justice, passion, martyrdom, hope) has little or nothing to do with what writers do. Writing skill, and even writing greatness, is as likely to be accompanied by moral vice as moral virtue. And the world—certainly the American world—has little interest in and few rewards for writers. The life of an writer is lonely, hard, and usually penurious; don’t undertake it if you hope for better than that. Don’t undertake it if you think the intellectual vocation the most important there is: It isn’t. Don’t undertake it if you have the least tincture in you of contempt or pity for those without writing talents: You shouldn’t. Don’t undertake it if you think it will make you a better person: It won’t. Undertake it if, and only if, nothing else seems possible.
