Expand definition of 'talent'

I recently read a book called "Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else," by Geoffrey Colvin.

Colvin sets out to demonstrate that "world-class performers," compared to performers at the next level down, did not start out with greater innate abilities.

Instead, they simply worked harder and longer. Sometimes they had unusual opportunities, but we usually think of that as "luck" or "good fortune" rather than talent.

In a way, Colvin isn't talking about "talent" at all. Talent is a word we usually use for youngsters or relative beginners. "He has a real talent for the piano," we might say of a child who masters each lesson easily — but we'd never say that about Vladimir Ashkenazy.

"He's a talented ballplayer," we might say of a Little Leaguer or even a college ballplayer. But when you talk about world-class players, the word "talent" sounds condescending. "Hank Aaron had a talent for home runs" is such an understatement that it's almost offensive.

We all know that early talent does not guarantee world-class achievement. But we also know that certain skills come more easily to some beginners than to others.

There is such a thing as talent, and kids who acquire certain skills with unusual ease and quickness are far more likely to go on to high achievements in those fields than kids for whom even the slightest advance comes with great struggle.

In the New Testament, when Christ told the parable of the talents, a talent was an amount of money — a huge amount, by the way, so that the servant who buried his one talent had been given a great deal.

The way we use talent today evolved from the parable. Our ancestors took the lesson of the parable and recognized that any special ability a person is given is very much like the amount of money that the master in the parable gave to each of his servants.

But we are wrong to limit the idea of talents merely to particular skills that come easily to us. Any stewardship we are given — any advantage or any responsibility — is a "talent" within the meaning of Christ's parable.

For instance, if you were to inherit a large amount of money, no one would call you "talented," but it certainly would qualify as a "talent" within the meaning of the parable: It is something of value with which you have been entrusted, and for whose use you will be accountable when the Lord returns.

Not every skill we have must define our destiny. One of my daughters, whose high test scores won her an invitation to attend a special school for mathematics, refused to go.

"Just because you're good at something doesn't mean you have to like it," she said, and went ahead to pursue other interests and abilities. And she was right to concentrate on doing what she loved, because then she could take joy in working at it.

Sometimes we use the worldly idea of "talents" as an excuse to deprecate abilities that happen not to be on the list of artistic and athletic abilities we usually think of as talents.

A woman of my long acquaintance has often said, "I'm not talented at anything, but I do the best I can." She doesn't say it sadly, she simply recognizes her limitations — in certain areas.

What she really means is that while she plays the piano fairly well, and in her youth was quite a dancer, she never worked at either skill enough to become truly excellent. She had no ambition to do so; there was other work that interested her more.

Dance and music are skills that we think of as "talents" — but it happens that this woman is extremely gifted at organizing people and bringing them together to accomplish good works. She has a real knack for putting on a meeting that is memorable and worthwhile.

She doesn't think of these skills as "talents" — they're just something she happens to do well and enjoys doing.

Oddly enough, that's exactly how I feel about my writing ability. As a child I discovered that adults got all excited when they saw things I had written, and I came to trust that when it came to writing, without any particular effort I could do well enough to make an impression.

That's exactly how this woman is with her ability to organize and perform a meeting. But because what I do is called a "talent," and what she does usually is not, she thinks she's "untalented."

Isn't that absurd? Both of us rely with complete confidence on our ability; neither of us has the slightest desire to do the thing that the other person excels at.

I think of my mother. She was an outstanding singer in her youth, and I grew up hearing her sing magnificently ... in church. For she gave up her dreams of a career as a singer in order to raise children. And I have heard her say that she never really did anything with her "one talent."

This is absurd, of course — for one thing, singing in church is not nothing! For another, she was also a gifted director of church plays and writer of road shows. She was also a spark plug — she still has the knack for thinking up a project and then making it happen.

But do you know what her greatest talent has always been? She has a gift for noticing what other people do well — even if it's only the tiniest improvement or the smallest "talent" — and praise them with the utmost sincerity.

Her gift for praise has transformed the lives of many young people during her years of service, both in church and in the workplace. It was not something she deliberately set out to do — she simply could not leave an enthusiastic word unsaid.

How many times have people of my generation told me stories of how my mother's word of praise gave them the heart to try new things or to keep plugging away at tasks that at times seemed hopeless! We Latter-day Saints should have a clearer view of "talents" than other people. Every opportunity we are given — whether it comes from innate skills built into the bodies we were given at birth, or inheritances or gifts given to us by other people, or opportunities we created through our own hard work — is a stewardship, and God will judge us according to what we did with it.

Instead of envying others who have "more talent" than we do, or feeling bad because we "have no talent," we should spend our lives taking every opportunity we have and using it to bless the lives of others.

Do you think that the Lord, at our judgment day, will be more impressed with people whose talent involved hitting a ball or composing a song than with those whose talent involved seeing someone else's need and meeting it, or organizing others to do good works?

All who do well with the opportunities they were given, in whatever field and of whatever kind, will hear the Lord say to them, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."