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11/29/04 - How can anybody support this idea of selective gift giving? How can you believe that only some people can be successful, and other people should just give up because they haven't been "gifted"? This idea could only be accepted by egotistical successful people who want to stifle any small seed of challenge to their mini empires. This idea would also easily be acceptable to anyone who's highly biased toward a creationist point of view. But let me ask you this, what good purpose could it possibly serve to suffocate a young seedling when it has every possibility to grow as large as any other seedling? This concept is more barbaric than civilized when pushed to the extreme if you think about "chosen" people killing each other over their egos and arrogance.

If you are an artist, your big sister was an artist, and your mother was an artist, people might think, "ooooohhh......this girl's got the gift of visual expression." You might never stop to think that the reason why the kid is so good is because she had role models to help her skip over the common blunders of other beginning artists with no role model. But this is exactly the case. Some kids are trained by people better than them, at a young age. Is this a gift? No, it's simple circumstance.

My point is that there is no gift! Some people have better learning circumstances, and more drive to learn. That's not a gift. It’s based right here on this planet. It's not an evolutionary development, and it's not blessed ever so gracefully by the creator to the chosen people. Study, learn, practice and work and you can be just as good as anybody. Even a person who had all the perfect training and support growing up might not have the drive to make good use of it.

A person who is a hard worker and studies and learns may have to fall in all the pitfalls of a beginner, but there is something to be said for paying for your mistakes yourself. It seems to me you would remember them better. Just like poor kids who would actually appreciate money more if they were given a fortune, as opposed to a rich kid who already has a fortune. Keep working, and don’t let anybody judge you against what they see because the point is not to be the best in the world, but to reach a point where you are satisfied with your work. If you will never be satisfied until you believe you are the best in the world, then you suffer from a self-defeating attitude because you will never be the best. Being the best is all a matter of perception anyway.

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