I had a thought last night. Imagine if Matisse hadn't been given his set of paints by his mum, (while he was getting over an illness) would he have known that he was any good at painting? Would his gift ever have come to light?
Do any of us have a gift that we just don't know about? Are we sitting on a king sized bushel with a mega light under it that we have no idea exists? And if we did know about it, is it the sort of gift that would change people's lives? Or would it be another scrap booking talent or being quite good on the recorder?
My son can play the guitar like a dream. He is seriously good. Right now he is at university reading music with guitar as his main instrument.
How come?
Well, when he was thirteen, his step grandmother gave him a small paperback called 'How to play the guitar'. Ben, my son, went up to his room armed with this little book and took out a guitar his dad had given him a couple of years before. As far as I know this guitar had never seen the light of day. From that day on, Ben has played his guitar each and every day. His gift for music was found and developed. What if the book had never been given to him? I have no idea.
I reckon that we need to have a go at things to see how we do. I can't see that everyone can have the most incredible gift such as Matisse. I mean, some people have gifts that seem to burst out of them without any restraint. Musicians like Mozart. But what if Mozart had been born in Bognor Regis with no piano or education? What then?
I just bet there are people living now without any outlet for their amazing ability to swim/ write/ educate/ lead the country/ play the drums/ paint/ score goals just because they don't know that they can do it.
So... what to do? How about doing something today that you have never done before but would like to try? Do something for the first time. I know that genius also needs a massive amount of hard work too. And that brilliance doesn't just arrive. But how exciting would it be, knowing that you had discovered something within yourself that you didn't know you could do, let alone be good at.
Go on! I dare you. Do something today.
And then write and tell me about it.
And I shall have a go too. We can compare notes...
Right, now where did I put that telephone number for NASA...?
3 comments:
This is something I have been thinking a lot about lately. My kids are 2 and 4 and my older one has just started school. Do I enrol her in ballet, karate, music, drama? All of them or none of them? Am I a pushy mother if I do...? Answers on a postcard...!
If I hadn't had my kids late ...
If I hadn't been standing under that tree on the park on that particular day ...
If I hadn't had the conversation about the local writers' group and thought, yeah, maybe that was something I could do ...
I would never have dreamed of writing a book (let alone 5) or that one day they would be published.
But sometimes I think things happen at the time they're supposed to.
I think that it happens when its happens... but there is always that 'what if'... and its that 'what if' that I am interested in.
Well done, Debi on your 5 books! How fab is that. Masses of hard work, I'll bet, but so worth seeing your name on those books.
Claire, I so know that conundrum, especially when the other mothers are carting their children off to T'ai chi, Mahjong, Ping Pong, blah blah blah... how DO we know what they are good at???
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