Find the thing in you that is different, that’s as sharp as a diamond and ragged as a razor. Hone that, because that’s the thing with which you’ll cut the world. — Clayton Cubitt, The Great Discontent
When you discover your talents, you have a choice: hone them or let them rust. Rust is an interesting thing; it doesn’t mean the talents have been lost to time. They’ve been lost to sameness and lack of use. They’re in the junkyard alongside everyone else’s. It’s almost impossible to tell which talents are yours and which belong to another.
You can find them, but it will take time and effort. Search for them anyway. Scavenge the yard. Climb the piles of forgotten drafts, paintings, chemical formulas, choreographies, musical compositions, and code. Find your talents. Pay the keeper some exorbitant fee and take them home.
Treat them like the precious jewels they are. You paid your life for them; give them the respect and honor they’re due. Don’t set them on the mantle. That is no sign of respect. Respect reveals itself in use.
Take the talents to the machine shop. Treat them as though they’re pieces of coal. Apply pressure. Wear away the grime. Let the brilliance of the diamond shine in the fading light. Keep working. You’re going to be stooped over your talents for a long time, perhaps, if you’re lucky or dedicated enough, a lifetime.
Don’t take these talents to the museum; again, they aren’t things to be ogled or treated with kid gloves. They’re things to be used. Use them. Refine them to their sharpest points. Turn them into razors, ragged and bloodied, and speak into a world that needs to know beauty, that needs to know truth.
Image: photophilde (Creative Commons)