Talent - blessing or curse?

When I was young, I always thought of talent as something to be treasured. Especially when I began working on startups, I admired those with talent, and strove to develop skills and abilities I did not have. I often thought about my talented friends who graduated from excellent universities [an insecurity of mine that took a long time to live down], and was jealous of their abilities.

"If only I could remember stuff like __", "If only I could write code like __", "If only I had the musical ability of __". I told myself that if I had all those things, I'd be master of my domain, and able to quickly find happiness.

But as with many things, I was wrong.

As I've developed happiness, I've discovered that it has a lot more to do with attitude and mental habits than with an ability to exercise control over my environment. Even if I do accomplish a goal (using talent that is beyond the common person), the satisfaction that I derive from that accomplishment is short-lived. Satisfaction is not cumulative -- it arises, and then falls away as quickly as it arose.

However, changing attitudes certainly affects happiness. As an example, I began to shift my attitude from "the world is out to get me" to "I love and respect all beings", I noticed that when I sat in public places, I felt happy and secure. It felt as though I was surrounded by friends, and not strangers to be feared. This is a happiness that lasts (at least for the amount of time I'm able to maintain such an attitude).

But going back to talent, is it a blessing, or a curse?

When you have a particular talent (say, "intelligence"), as you accomplish things using that talent, you generally get complimented on it. "Wow Jeff, you're smart!" "Jeff, you're going to win the nobel prize!" -- these were things I often heard in high school. As a result, I began to build an identity around that talent. I thought: "I'm so smart. I can do anything. I'm better than other people at figuring stuff out. I'm one of the smartest!"

But over the years, life taught me a lesson (the hard way), that 1) I'm nowhere near the smartest person out there (in part because intelligence is measured in so many different ways, and in part because I may have been a smart person at my high school, but in the pool of the entire world, I'm pretty low on the overall rank), and 2) that using my intelligence to accomplish things never brought me satisfaction. This was because as soon as I accomplished something, my internal assessment of my talents would rise, and I would hold myself to ever higher standards: "A person of my talent could accomplish even more!"

Talent is a curse, because it builds identities that we cannot live up to. I was indeed "smart" in high school. But the ambitions that I (and others) set up for me were completely unrealistic. The years following high school (where I accomplished little and found little satisfaction) were difficult because that raw potential never panned out. How could it have, when the expectations were so high?

I've seen so many of my friends suffer because they hold on to an identity built around a talent. I've seen people chase jobs they hate because they're talented at them, and want to be perceived as talented. I've seen others hold off on taking a job (including myself) because they believed they were so talented, that they should be offered the perfect job that was on their level. I've seen others push in areas for years and years because they held on to the view that sooner or later, their talent would be recognized, and then they'd be happy.

But as we've all seen in our own lives (time and time again), satisfaction is fleeting. You can't live in the past forever -- the human mind moves on. We can't find lasting satisfaction through achievement. We can only find it by changing our attitudes and minds to be satisfied with reality -- the ever-changing present moment.