Just Because You’re Good at Something Doesn’t Mean You Have to Do It

Talent alone doesn’t make something satisfying if you lack passion.

When I was born, as the story goes, my grandmother held me her arms, looked at my fingers and pronounced that I would be a great pianist someday. Now, this grandmother evidently had a gift of knowing what would come to pass in the future. There are all kinds of stories about times when she said something that was going to happen that would, exactly as she said.

So, when she predicted I’d be a piano virtuoso some day, it was only a matter of time until I started taking lessons. I don’t remember how old I was when I began, but I know I was taking them by the time I was in first grade. I won’t say I hated it, but it wasn’t something I was excited about. Plus, I never had any choice about it, nor the practicing that went along with it. I was required to practice an hour a day, and a timer was set to ensure I didn’t scimp by so much as a minute. This had to occur before I was allowed to go outside and play, and it was a seven day a week thing.

I liked working on pieces until I mastered them, but once I had done so, I was ready to move onto something new. And I did actually become pretty good. It was clear I had a certain amount of talent and with practice I continued to improve. I was always one of the top students at the rehearsals and won several school talent shows to boot.

But I always dreaded practicing and feared messing up during the recitals. I loved it afterwards, not because of the attention, that was something I never liked, but because of the sense of relief that it was over for yet another year.

I knew better than to ask if I could quite. I took lessons faithfully through highschool despite coming to dislike them and I absolutely loathed practicing. And truthfully, the fact was my grandmother had been wrong. While I might have made it into some kind of low level local ensemble, with a lot more practice and passion for playing, I was never going to be a concert pianist.

I remember having a friend who I had known through highschool who I saw when I came home for the first break. During the course of the conversation, she asked me where I was practicing piano. When I told her I wasn’t playing anymore she got upset. She had always wanted to play piano professionally but knew she just didn’t have the talent for it. She actually became angry with me, demanding to know how I could just quit when I had the talent she had always wanted.

Even when I explained to her that I was never at a level that I could have taken it to symphony hall or anywhere close, she said I at least had enough talent to make a living doing it. She stormed off after saying that I was being unfair to the universe by not living up to my God given potential.

I remember being put out by the whole conversation. Who gave her the right to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do with my life? I had the right to make my own choices and trying to force myself to do something I wasn’t happy doing may have been “fair to the universe” but it wasn’t fair to me.

We Naturally Resent People Who Can Achieve a Dream We Cannot But Choose Not To

We all have dreams over the course of our lifetime. Some may be more realistic than others but even the less realistic ones, at some point, we still often try to pursue. Maybe we let ourselves believe something is still an option despite evidence to the contrary when we want it more than anything.

When it becomes clear we aren’t cut out for whatever it is, we may become jealous of those who are able to achieve the dream we want. But the jealousy isn’t anything close to the disbelief and resentment we feel when such a person decides to do something else. It’s akin to having a dream of becoming a professional dancer, while our classmate Baryshnikov decide as a teenager that ballet’s just not for him.

I have several instances of experiencing this and still become incredulous when I think about these individuals. In one case, it was, in fact, someone in my ballet class who had the perfect body, which I didn’t have, the natural turnout and flexibility, also a no go on my part, and talent beyond belief. Then one day she told us in the dressing room, she wouldn’t be returning the following year. She wanted to go to the science magnet school and wouldn’t have time for dance classes any longer.

I remember sitting there first stunned then becoming angry. Even though I made fun of it, at least in my head, when my friend made her comment about my quitting piano not being fair to the universe, this was exactly how I felt. How could she be given every bit of the requirements to be a professional ballet dance, and quit when I wanted it more than anything and was destined never to be able to succeed at it? How was that fair? How could she just throw it all away?

Being Good At Something Should Not Dictate Our Lives

We need to remember both in the decisions we make for ourselves and the judgments we make about others, that just because someone is good at something, doesn’t mean they have to do it. We are all good at a number of things. We all have talents that peak their head out testing the air and waiting to see what we do with them. We leave most of them along the way as we grow up, simply choosing not to pursue them.

In high school, we were required to take a military aptitude test. Who would have predicted that I would get a high score on it? Despite recruiter calling our house every night for over a month, I guarantee you that military service was just not for me no matter what the test said!

The unfortunate truth is that often we have a passion and drive to pursue dreams that we may not be cut out for. I think this is in part because the things we naturally do well, we often take for granted. Despite it taking a lot of work, dancing Odette/Odile from Swan Lake was not a major event to the girl in my class. Never being able to even aspire to the role, I absolutely dreamed about what it would be like. Piano was something that I could do well, which seemed like no big deal to me, but my friend dreamed about being able to play the advanced pieces I was able to learn.

Do What You Love Even If You Aren’t the Best At It

It’s natural for adults to notice talent in children and try to encourage it. That’s a wonderful thing if the talent matches the child’s interest in the activity. But children will try out a lot of different things on their way to adulthood and the choices that lead them to define their life path. Some they’ll be good at, others they won’t. Trying to get a child to do something they don’t enjoy just because they are good at it will not likely lead to them continuing in it long term.

It’s also natural for us to notice exceptional talent in our peers that we ourselves would do practically anything to have. But at the end of the day, we all have the right to decide what makes us happy and to decide not to pursue what fails to fulfill us.

Talent is a great thing but it will only take us so far..We may find that we need to rely on it for income or to fulfill a commitment we made earlier. Even if this is the case however, a satisfying life comes from pursuing something we are passionate about even if we can’t do so full time.

There’s no shame in quitting something we don’t enjoy doing. But it is a shame to live a life devoid of the experience of pursuing your raison d’etra, regardless of whether you’ll ever become the world’s best at whatever it is. It’s up to us to find what it is that makes our soul sing, and then find a way to incorporate it into our life on whatever level this is possible. We’ll never feel sorry that we did.

Thanks to Zita Fontaine for the inspiration for this story.

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