In 2006, an English teacher asked her high school students to write letters to famous authors. Only one replied: Kurt Vonnegut, then 84 years old.
He could have just thanked them politely. Instead, he gave them one of the most powerful lessons of his life:
“Practice any art… no matter how well or badly. Not to get money or fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”
He urged them to dance, sing, draw, make faces in mashed potatoes—anything that brought life alive. Then he gave them an assignment: write a six-line poem, make it as good as possible, and then tear it up. The reward, he explained, was not in showing it to anyone, but in having created it at all.
Vonnegut died the following year, but his message remains timeless: the value of art is not in recognition, but in the simple, joyful act of making something—for your soul.
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