I just sped through a A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut, a short book that’s part autobiography, part essays, but mostly just Vonnegut’s irreverent and enlightened musings from near the end of his long and productive life. 
Here’s one of my favorite bits:
The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.
I immediately started quoting that to my kids, who are both in high school and thus entrenched in academic rigor. Luckily, they also both make ample time for arts, especially music, but also writing and painting and making short films and drawing animatic flip books. I know some parents who’ve tried to dissuade their kids from pursuing their artistic passions, reasoning that engineers or accountants make more money than musicians. Of course, some do. But many achieve this financial success at no small cost to their happiness. And the older I get, the more urgently I realize that being happy and creating beautiful things is the most important thing.
Here’s the rest of that paragraph from Vonnegut:
Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
