Hidden Talents

For this week's blog post, I thought I'd take a trip down one of the "what if" thought paths that inspire my writing.

All hope abandon, yadda, yadda, yadda...

I often find myself wondering what hidden talents people have.  Not just the skills they posses but don't publicize (like when I found out a friend of mine worked as a professional magician's assistant for two years), but talents that they themselves don't know they have.

How many of us have talents that we never know about because we're never put in a situation where we would know about them?

Maybe that businesswoman picking up a double shot of expresso would be a skilled hunter with superior spear throwing abilities.  Maybe there's a child in a developing country who could solve the unified field equation or who could create a brilliant new coding language.

I first started thinking about such hidden talents when I learned the story of Arthur Currie (not Aquaman, an actual Canadian who served in World War II).  He wasn't particularly exceptional, until he found himself in the trenches and discovered he had a talent for large battlefield logistics.  His tactical plans led to several pivotal victories.  If he had lived at a different time and place, no one would have ever known he had such skills.

This is one of the aspects I love about post-apocalyptic storylines, the idea of people discovering strengths in themselves they've never suspected.  (Okay, I also love it in a lot of other stories, too.)

In JMS's Midnight Nation, the characters visit a vault where all of the undone projects are.  The really funny novel that Dostoevsky was going to write when he was done being so depressing.  Einstein's unified field theory.  Light-weight tornado-proof construction material that could be made out of recycling.  Renewable, sustainable energy sources.  All undiscovered because the people who would have thought of them took different paths in life.  The idea of this kind of sanctuary of the unknown fascinates me.

Some of my friends find the concept of unknown talents to be depressing.  The idea that someone could spend their lives in mediocrity, never known that they could have been exceptional in some way, bothers them.  I find it has the opposite effect on me.  No matter how many challenges grind a person down, everyone still has the potential to be transcendent.  And it gives me the courage to try things even when I don't think I'll be very good at them, because what if this is the key that unlocks one of my hidden talents?

To me, the real shame would be if I never gave myself a chance.

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