The true talent is the ability to carry on

Long time ago I read a quote from Habu¹(as shown in the screenshot):

The true talent is the ability to carry on with passion, even when it probably won’t pay off.

(not translated word by word)

I was a teenager and it did not make any sense to me. How could passion be the true talent? Look at those geniuses like Gauss, Mozart, John von Neumann! What they have done is not something that could have been done by normal people. True talent is what they have that made them do the amazing things, I thought.

I was too young and too simple, sometimes naive,² to understand it.

Two types of talent

Of cause, I am not suggesting that talent in the traditionally sense (i.e. the ability to effortlessly achieve something average people have difficulty in) does not exist. In fact, it might play a big role in areas especially in arts, mathematics and other fields that requires great originality - since there are countless people who are incredibly interested in these fields and work incredibly hard, yet only a small portion of them can become “great” in their fields, this must be the effect of something other than interest and industriousness - which is argueably the effect of “talent”.

Of cause having passion and working hard matters a lot too, but I could not see their values when there are so many extreme cases of when “talent” outplays everything.

But now as a grown man, I look at the people I know, I see some of them are much gifted than I am, and yet they chose to do something that completely wasted their talents, completely irrelevant with what they are really good at. Some of them tried to strech themselves to the limit and do something great, but gave up the midway.

And that’s how I had the epiphany.

Let’s introduce some terminology: Type 1 talent is the ability to do something without effort; it is the skills and knowledge you assimilate unconsciously. Type 2 talent is the ability to work consciously, to reach beyond your limit, to go through pain but still enjoy it.

the talent described by Habu is the second type, without which you would not reach self-actualization, would not have the chance to fully use your type 1 talent, would not be able to do amazing things that you could have done!

Type 1 won’t let you go beyond your innate limit (by definition!). You might be very gifted and are able to do many things effortlessly, but it can only take you so far. Of cause, if you are gifted enough, you can still have a great job or your own business, have a comfortable life and have a lot of fun. Without type 2 talent, you will never reach your true limit and will waste what God gifted you ³.

A very very edge special case as an example to see how they work in action:

You must have once met some people who are really good at, say, a sport in your life. They know and use their bodies smoothly with their animal-like instincts. But most likely they did not become top athletes as they grow up. Why? because for most sports, for most people, at some point deliberate practice is needed. You might be gifted enough to do a 98% accurate move effortlessly, but a person who keeps trying to really understand how all the things work together and tries all means just to reach from 97% to 99%, will beat the person who does 98% but is unwilling to put in the conscious work to go beyond 98%. Going to 99%, no matter it is from 97% or from 98%, requires shifting away from your habbits and try new things, lots of trials and errors, paying attention to insanely-hard-to-notice details, lots of reflections and self-monitoring, lots of times beating your own ego…

Which is tremendously painful. If you don’t love what you do.

It is love

Although it might sounds like something a toxic lover would say, but love is usually exemplified by getting through pain voluntarily: if you are just doing something without effort and serious considerations, that is just your instinct, not your choice. Love is irrational, without conditions. So the ultimate exemplification of love is to choose a path that rational people would not choose, but you still want to choose that path.

And to actualize your true potential is “irrational” - since, if you know you effort is likely going to be fruitful and worth to be put it, then you are still quite close to your comfort zone. So, to have the type 2 talent implies that you love what you do. You don’t know whether your effort will pay off, you don’t where it will lead you. Yet you still want to do it.

That is exactly the even when it probably won’t pay off part in Habu’s quote.

Someone told me (as a joke, but I think there was a big portion of truth in it) that “rational people would not do a pure maths PhD and try to pursue an academic career. If you are intelligent enough to do well in this career path you could become a much more “successful” person in many other careers”. I laughed real hard but could not deny it.

So I think the type 2 talent is the talent to love.

Even Gauss, Mozart, John von Neumann and many other great people whose names are carved in history, they surely have the type 1 talent, but they all must have insane amount of love in what they did.

Now when I see someone do great things, I do not see the “talent”, I see love.