I think it does. If you look at the lives of a lot of artists (and a lot of scientists throughout history!), it seems that a great many of them had miserable lives because of this tortured search for "something that could be better, something missing, something needed."

There's an old legend where I live, in the Czech Republic, of a fire bird. The hero sees the bird and his horse tells him, "If we turn around right now, you'll have a nice life, a quiet, happy life... but if you capture that bird, you'll cry and you'll suffer, and your life will be an amazing adventure." The horse begs him to chose the former, but of course, the hero's journey is the latter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebird_%28Slavic_folklore%29