Kurt Vonnegut wrote: โWhen I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of โgetting to know youโ questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? Whatโs your favorite subject? And I told him, no I donโt play any sports. I do theater, Iโm in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.
And he went WOW. Thatโs amazing! And I said, โOh no, but Iโm not any good at ANY of them.โ
And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: โI donโt think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think youโve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.โ
And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadnโt been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could โWinโ at them.
