Thursday, October 24, 2013

"One of the marks of a gift is to have the courage of it."-- Katherine Anne Porter

I don't know if Katherine is right in all cases, but I would definitely change the "C" word from "Courage" to "Compulsion" when looking at the gifted.
It seems to me that people with a gift can't help but do what they do.  It's all they want to do, it's all they need to do, it's a focused attention to one thing that's almost superhuman.
With the gifted, excellence comes naturally.  They do what they do very, very well--as well they should. Their focus from birth is to express the gift they've been given and share it with others.
It takes work to fashion raw talent into fabulous, amazing art; work and dedication that's harder to maintain when you aren't "gifted".  The frustration of the merely talented when they compare themselves with the gifted must be overcome, for it takes courage for talented artists to keep going in the face of a gifted person's effortless competence and mastery.
I would say that the mark of a talented artist is to have the courage of it.

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