There are 2 ways to look at the strengths and skills that come innately to us and not to others. The first way is to see it as a competitive advantage and to do everything in our power to leverage it in this hyper-capitalist economy. In this version, the gifted feel ‘entitled’ – as if they have a ‘head start’. Taking advantage of the gift is a priority, and fully in the individual’s control. If you don’t do everything in your power to use that advantage, you’ve failed. It’s a very individualist mindset – every person for themselves and it’s not my problem if you’ve wasted the opportunity to use your strengths.
The second way is to acknowledge that the strengths and weaknesses are unique and individual, but true advantage of them cannot be taken without depending on others. In this mindset, the strengths we each possess are ‘in trust’ – borrowed from the cosmic chaos of the universe and as such, should in some way benefit the universe in return.
All by myself?
It turns out that one of my strengths is visual communication. Out of all of the trillions of possible permutations, the atoms in my body have arranged themselves in a way that has created a natural hyper-sensitivity to colour, movement, line, and shape. But, for me to be able to use those fully, I need others. I need the farmers who grow the cotton that gets turned into my paper that I use to capture that colour, movement, line and shape. I need the paper makers and all of the history of science and the industrial world whose progress helped create the technology that those paper makers use today. I need the sable, whose hair goes into the brushes that I use. I need the trees from which the brush handles are made. I need the craftsmen and women who craft the individual components into what we see as a brush in the store. I need the building blocks of colour chemistry whose knowledge and skill have evolved from the knowledge of early humans – those that ground the first red scarab beetle to make a colour. I could write pages and pages of how the universe’s systems, and my place in the timeline of it all, which is largely a big pile of chaotic luck, have enabled me to use the strengths that I have in the way that I’m doing it in my brief speck of time on earth.
The interconnectedness and interdependence we, as individual permutations of human biology, have on each other and the biological world around us that’s been evolving over millions of years is something that’s easy to forget when we’re struggling with the fear that comes along with sharing our art. But, maybe the idea that we’ve taken from the environment compels us to give something back? Maybe that’s the impetus some of us need, to simply pay back that debt, even if it means no financial gain – the type of gain we’ve come to think is the point of it all. Instead, maybe it’s about giving something back to the timeline so that, maybe one day, something or someone somewhere will use or build upon. Just as we have.