I wonder what he would choose if he knew? A comfortable long life and happiness or to be remembered forever?
As an often-depressed creative person, I find that depression is absolutely the enemy of creativity, but my creativity is often fueled by the same things that cause my depression.
Meeting my creative goals is often about managing the depression. But without the depression, my creative output would likely be very different.
In On Writing, Stephen King has this lovely quote about his journey to get off of drugs: “The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. ... Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers — common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I've heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons.”
Just because Van Gogh was (presumably) happy while doing his painting, doesn’t mean that the suffering previous wasn’t an important component in portraying it in his art.
One of my favourite novellas is Dostoyevskys White Nights, which portrays a young man in love.
His portrayal is so vivid that I doubt it could have been written by anyone who hasn’t experienced heartbreak.
... through meditation.
EDIT: He died in 1849 so it hasn't even been 200 years.
What is a billionaire's lavish life to the toil of an artist, inventor, or revolutionary? We all wind up rotting in the blink of an eye. Luxury, pleasure, and dopamine are as fleeting as youth.
It's better to do something of note.
You could just as easily say “we’ll all end up rotting in the blink of an eye, so better to be happy and enjoy it than waste your time trying pointlessly to do something of note that will be forgotten”.
Thought and actions have much more meaning to time than our tiny, worthless genes. Or the neurotransmitters dancing in our brains. Or the decaying weights that hold thoughts just briefly. Brains carry a simulation of the world for a short time. They cannot be shared or replicated or extended. Their pleasure has no value to anyone but yourself, and like the hedonic treadmill on which they run, it doesn't provide enduring value. Just an endless appetite that calls to be satiated. Thoughts and actions, however, pay civilizational dividends. They endure beyond our short lives and carry our world's evolution into the vast future.
We're all already practically dead. It won't be long. The years tick by in the blink of an eye. Everyone you know is growing old. You can make your finite choices and optimize for a few good trips, and a sports car if you want, but that's all meaningless. When you get Alzheimer's you won't remember. When you get cancer, it'll bring you little comfort. And when you die, it'll all be annihilated.
Accolades and remembrance and legacy don't matter either. Just your actions and how they shape the future live on.
That isn't to say you should live an entirely ascetic lifestyle devoid of pleasure and friends and family. We need some comfort to maintain our happiness and sanity. But to make it life's sole purpose seems like the greatest waste in the majestic algorithm of the cosmos. We're each the universe alive for the blink of an eye, and to only pleasure and tickle ourselves is such a shallow thing to spend such an invaluable thing on.
I know lots of folks that live for the next vacation or the next big purchase, and they're spending their careers writing plumbing or glue, or shuffling paper. That's something I can't wrap my head around. It's not cope. It's recognition of our place in time.
Depending on your perspective, life can be amazing and full of wonders, or it could be drudgery where the only thing which makes you happy is a moment of respite. Someone could easily strawman your argument by saying that everything you do is worthless because we're infinitesimal beings on a tiny rock orbiting a star in a corner of the universe. The Sun is going to explode eventually, humans might destroy the planet no matter what you do, or an asteroid might take us all out like the dinosaurs, rendering your life of actions and purposeful existence useless in the end.
All of this is to say, do what makes you happy and dont worry about others so much.
And you have time to avoid philosophical discussions that distract you from the above.