This was prompted by a new friend showing me some of her daughter’s artworks. They are utterly spectacular. (This new friend somehow feels like a long-lost additional twin sister to me, even though she’s like 20 years younger and we just met! I say “additional,” because I have another “non-biological twin sister”; she lives on the other side of the country and is my same age.)
Also, one of my own nieces — a daughter of my biological, birth-family sister — is an incredibly gifted artist and could probably benefit from the same peptalk (although this channel probably won’t reach her).
I’ve spoken before to my fellow Boomers about the ecological damage caused by steering our youth toward the conventional extractive-economy occupations in the name of “stability.”
But there is also deep-seated personal emotional damage, as well as a planetary opportunity cost, for not explicitly encouraging and nurturing and fueling a young person’s passion for the arts if that is where their calling lies.
Anyway, this is what I said to my new friend:
“I feel this so strongly I can’t really fit it into a text but I have to try — [Daughter’s name]’s artwork is absolutely spectacular and I do believe she and others will change the world by sticking with their art and considering it a valid occupational path. Too many young people have been talked out of being who they were meant to be. People your age and my age as well. I was one of the lucky ones who managed to escape although it came at a penalty.
For what it’s worth, my art is nowhere near as good as your daughter’s or my biological niece’s (my main thing is really writing) — and yet it has paid my rent in some years!
I want to encourage the precious young people to trust their art as a livelihood and a tool of liberation. Personal and planetary.