Talents: Where Did It Come From?

Where do talents come from? A priest will say "it's a gift from up above!", and a scientist will say.. "It's an inherited trait from either one of your parents or relatives."

But what about the kind of talent that made you do it because of a given circumstance? Money. Fame. Family. For personal gain. Trippings. Expression. Love.

Pick a choice.

I, on the other hand, was brought up in a musically inclined father side. Environment, would be the triggering factor for me, I guess. Influences that almost eats the very core of originality in you.

And where do these "gifts", as we say, come from? It's not like you just picked up a guitar-and-start-strumming-and- everything-will-follow kind of scenario for some. The late great Michael Jackson was trained by his father almost all his childhood life. And you'd asked, was the awesomeness and brilliance came from years and years of practice? Just practice and a sacrificed childhood are what it takes to be great?

It starts as a discovery. You soon discovered you can hit a note, hit an empty can without blinking, catch a ball in an amazing graceful way, to speak fluently and manipulatively, to capture a fly in a split second, to calculate a radical number and divide it to cotangent, to think strategically, to love in the most unimaginable way, to shoot a basket without a miss, to listen and comprehend, to trick one's mind, to receive pain and continues to do so, to read a million pages, to write the most moving phrases that you have ever written.

...and then you start to develop it. To hone. To purify it. To accept fate. To accept mistakes. To accept weaknesses. To accept that almost everyone can do what you can do, as well. To accept not that there's an equal born to do what you're doing is foolishness. To be equally unique is a test.

....and you share these unique things you've done.

...until there's nothing left to do but to grow. To grow to something different or something worthwhile. And continue sharing. By how? Teaching. Can we now safely conclude that talents can be passed on? Possibly.

And yet, where do these talents come from? was it an innate sleeping pulse of energy, waiting for a particular thing to happen? Was it from lack of anything to do? Or was it because your parents told you so? Envious for the fact that your siblings and peers can do it, why can't you? Or was it inspiration?

We can always assume that a man is just a man. A chef is just a cook if you leave him in a kitchen. But a cook at night and a musical composer by day will certainly destroy that assumption. I'm trying to analyze myself in terms of composing a song or tune. Mostly, my songs were done by a flick of a thought. It would just come from out of nothing, until a light bulb just appeared from that nothingness, I just switched on that light. But it never stopped there. You'd examine the light bulb, until you're convinced that that light bulb, that idea, is unique. Then you may now start to develop that light bulb into a fluorescent, and that florescent light will become something much bigger. And you'd start sharing that huge fluorescent bulb. Was it also the same as dancing, capture a breath-taking scene or photograph, driving, card playing, eating much, wrote a poem? I don't think so.

I could never answer where or to whom these gifts come from. However I can only have a hint or a guess about these talents:

That it may start from something you love. Or something you're proud of. Or something that makes you, not them, happy. And then you will have control. You will be awed at what you're doing. It is love. Because whatever talent you may have, without that drive, everything would end up as a joke with pun intended.