Surviving Talent

Sur­viv­ing Tal­ent — Tal­ent is often hid­den, hav­ing been repressed for fear of stand­ing forth. There are ways to re-engage with the tal­ent just beneath the surface.

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I real­ly don’t think the con­text for this quote is all that impor­tant, but the line comes from one of the pro­tag­o­nists observ­ing Isaac New­ton as a child. Oth­er kids attempt first to mock him, then to bul­ly him, then to beat him up. (None of which was suc­cess­ful in the least.) 

The nar­ra­tor is com­ment­ing about the nature of social pres­sure, as it is exert­ed against those who stand out.

Let’s see what we can see!

Talent was (is) not rare

So, Sep­tem­ber 2024 was the 40th anniver­sary of my begin­ning my train­ing as a psy­chother­a­pist. (He says that with a small sigh and shake of head…) With­out bor­ing you, here’s how that goes: you’re in class a lot, you work with 10 clients a week, and you’re supervised. 

Back then, that meant being observed through two-way-glass or video. Twice a year, there’s a writ­ten eval­u­a­tion, again two-way. You answer essay ques­tions about who you are and how you’re doing, and your super­vi­sor does the same.

In my sec­ond year, my super­vi­sor wrote, in her first eval­u­a­tion, “Wayne often has much high­er expec­ta­tions for his clients than they have,” as if this was a prob­lem. In lat­er dis­cus­sion, she said she thought this approach might lead to dis­ap­point­ment on my part, and too much pres­sure for my clients.

At the end of sec­ond year, she wrote, “Wayne con­tin­ues to have much high­er expec­ta­tions for his clients, and he is almost always right.” I just smiled. I had real­ized I could see my clients’ tal­ents and poten­tial, and I was not about to ignore it.

Tal­ent is not rare. For most, it’s sim­ply been buried under years of neglect and dis-use. It’s been put down by sig­nif­i­cant adults dur­ing child­hood, beat­en out of them through crit­i­cism and threat, and final­ly giv­en up on as a pipe dream.

Exam­ple: Through grade 3, I was a straight “A” stu­dent. One day, in grade 4, I was walk­ing home with a hulk­ing dude named Danny. 

Here’s an inter­est­ing tid­bit: he car­ried a switch­blade knife in his boot, and took it out once in class, when I was try­ing to strip a wire. The teacher said, “Thank you for shar­ing Dan­ny, now put that back in your boot.” 

And hey! We all lived!

Any­way, Dan­ny lived across the street, and we walked home togeth­er a lot. 

One day, he said, “You know, I don’t have a sin­gle friend that gets good grades.” Now, there was no threat—but to my 9‑year-old mind, it sound­ed like, “If you want to be my friend, You’d bet­ter “dumb down.” So I did—I became a “C” stu­dent for a year or so. As sim­ple as that. 

Imagine what happens when real pressure is exerted by adults

Dan­ny is a benign exam­ple. Here’s anoth­er, with a bit more pizazz.

There once was a woman we knew, who basi­cal­ly, at 28, was stum­bling along, putting in time. She was in a dead end job, failed mar­riage, fail­ing rela­tion­ship, “numb” sex­u­al­ly, unhap­py and shut down.

She start­ed spend­ing time with Dar­bel­la and me. One day, she described her “grow­ing up” environment.

She told us that was con­tin­u­al­ly paint­ing and draw­ing. Mom and dad want­ed her to be a doc­tor. Quoth they: “We sup­port the arts–we don’t make art!”

Her par­ents, both doc­tors, repeat­ed­ly took away her art sup­plies. She’d find ways to draw. Final­ly, though, she just gave up. She rebelled, by drop­ping out of school, etc. 

She showed me a pho­to of a paint­ing she’d done, on a whim, with no train­ing, and it was stunning.

After a while hang­ing out with us and hear­ing “encour­ag­ing words,” she went back to school, and start­ed paint­ing. We lost con­tact with her, but I don’t think she ulti­mate­ly stuck with it. She declared “game over” in her 30s, because,

Talent was not rare; the ability to survive having it was.

Why?

Because sur­viv­ing while hav­ing tal­ent is tricky

Our cul­ture, prob­a­bly for­ev­er, and espe­cial­ly in the last sev­er­al decades, prizes “fit­ting in” while blam­ing oth­ers over vis­i­ble expres­sions of tal­ent. Oh, we’re will­ing to read about tal­ent­ed peo­ple, and we give lip ser­vice to want­i­ng our “kids” to be tal­ent­ed, but only if they don’t rock the boat, and still fit in.

Again and again, I see parents force feeding their kids this “party line”—

fit in, don’t make waves, be rea­son­able, don’t have “unac­cept­able emo­tions,” etc.

Or, my per­son­al favourite, telling their kids to excel, while refus­ing to bring forth their own tal­ent and pas­sion. “Do as I say, not as I do” is the motto.

And the tal­ent­ed who are also “out of the clos­et of repres­sion” shake their heads and wish for a “bet­ter day.”

We’ve all been con­di­tioned to dial down our pas­sion and our cre­ativ­i­ty, to refuse to “go for it, damn the con­se­quences,” and the world is poor­er because of it.

I look at peo­ple, and see their poten­tial—their blocked or poor­ly used tal­ent, which to my eyes, is just under the sur­face. And I see their pos­ture, and hear the words of the beat­en down, who have for­got­ten what lies right there.

I attempt to shine a bit of light, hold up a mir­ror, to help oth­ers open the flood­gates and get a glim­mer of what’s avail­able. Some of them get it, embrace it, and start liv­ing their tal­ent, their passion.

Most­ly, I watch this curi­ous phe­nom­e­non, like what our artist friend, in the illus­tra­tion above, chose:

They open them­selves up just a bit, stick a toe in, then swim in the cre­ative flow, sigh with relief. And then they tight­en, re-play the old, old sto­ry, and things go back to normal. 

They do as they were told, except as they get old­er and become par­ents, they are now doing the telling–the restricting.

Talent is hard to survive.

Unless you choose to let the blocked, inhib­it­ed, shut down ver­sion of you “die,” unless you choose to face the fear, the bul­ly­ing, the restric­tions head on, and step through.

Then you dis­cov­er that what was hold­ing you back are your sto­ries, and your sto­ries are as insub­stan­tial as smoke.

And there you are, as you are, and act­ing in a new, clear­er and more “in the flow” way, in your rela­tion­ships, as you pro­duce your mag­ic, has the pow­er to change everything.

But only if you choose not just to sur­vive your tal­ent, but to embrace it.

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