Talent or Effort?

I have often heard people exclaim that my shooting is a "natural" born talent or when you see someone who is great at music that they are just "born that way".  The whole nature versus nurture is a confusing topic, one that I have seen plenty of emotions in discussions over it.

The most common thing people bring up is music.  All these amazing children that can play instruments better than adults.  Here are some great videos with kids doing amazing things:

3 year old dancing

5 year old Bruce Lee

Every time I see videos like this, I hear the arguments for "nature" ringing through my head - all those people believing in fate.  All I see, though, is a child that has found one way to interact with his parents.  

If you pay attention to each child "prodigy", you will find parents that are very focused in particular area of that child's development.  For instance, when I was in the Marine Corps, I rarely saw my children.  One of the best stress relievers I had was my motorcycle, and I would often take it apart, clean it and put it back together for a long weekend project.  

It was one of my favorite means to relax, my son as a result of this took keen interest in motorcycles, to the point at 4 years old he could explain what a spark plug was and knew how to find it.  He also know where the oil and fuel filters were and what the different type of screwdriver heads were that I used (flat, phillips, & hex).  The store clerks at auto stores were blown away when he would walk up and tell them the exact part we needed, why we needed it and what it did on the bike.  

If you were to ask my son now, however, where or what some of those are - he may not remember.  Since then, I have a much healthier balance in time spent with my children and he can explore many aspects of life as opposed to one hobby of mine.  I'm not sure what I'm implying about parents that have only one way to relate with their children - it would depend on the relationship to determine if it was good or bad.

So what determines our potential in life?

Starting Point

First off, I consider the starting point we are all at.  It is my faith and belief that we are both spiritual and physical.  We have a spirit body, of whom God is the Father, and we have our physical bodies that are created by our earthly parents.  This is why we call God, "Heavenly Father", He is the literal father of our spirits.  Given that we inherit traits from our lineage, we all have the potential of perfection in all things.  This is why Christ taught us to "be perfect", it is an achievable expectation, if not in this life.  

But, we do not live in God's presence, rather, we are here in this broken and fallen world.  Everything from the lack of symmetry of the earth to our inability to have kindness for all people are clear indicators that we live in a time and space that is separate from God.  

This separation is called "The Veil".  I do not know if it is an actual event horizon or if it is something we can actually understand in this life.  What I do know, is that it is real and it ensures we have time to live here on Earth as we decide what we wish to be.  

Part of this imperfection, we inherit imperfect traits from our earthly parents.  From the ability to be sick and die to a lack of holiness - our imperfect physical bodies are far from the perfected frame God and Christ have.    

Genetics

Given that we have a combination of perfected and broken genes, we will always have this argument of nurture vs nature.  Every person is unique in how they experience this broken existence.  An obvious example are handicapped people that are born with defective bodies or brains.  Clearly, no matter how hard they work at goals in life, they will be barred from most of what society takes for granted.  

It then also stands to reason, the people that are incapable of identifying pitches and are thereby tone death, might have a flaw in how their physical and spiritual body combine.  I don't think that these are common, however.  If we state otherwise, we implicate that apathy is an acceptable route due to conditions beyond our control.  It limits our ability to be free to choose if we believe this way.  

Brain Development

We are still greatly ignorant in how the brain functions, but we know that it is elastic and pliable.  At younger ages, it is much more so and as we progress into adulthood, the brain becomes less flexible. Meaning, if you expose a child to a learning point at a younger age, then they will have a natural brain development that supports accelerated learning and comprehension in that space.  It does not mean the child was born with the advantage - it was trained and developed.

This is also crucial to understand why it is harder for adults to gain new expertise, it is still possible, but requires greater patience and diligence.  Two things that are generally lacking in our society and if you believe that you weren't "born with the ability" to do your dream, you give up before you understand your potential.  

Parental Influence

Here is an interesting video of a child that seems pre-disposed at science.  At 14, he created a nuclear reactor.  Here is another one of a teen that has some amazing mechanical skills, he started riding at age 3 and how has built his own prototype bike.  

A common thread in all of these videos is the parental involvement.  The dancing kid does this everyday with his family - especially his mother.  The Bruce Lee kid clearly spends a lot of time acting out Bruce Lee to his parents, it is his channel for attention and playing with them.

The fusion kid had parents that supported his desires that then developed into talents and true capacity.  If you look at the pictures of him at different stages, his parents fueled his interests by purchasing him science equipment his entire childhood.  

The motorcycle kid bonds with his father by making his bike and car.  His father's passion of mechanical work has become his as well.  

All of these kids had parents that supported their desires, and helped launch those desires into reality.  Consider on the flip side, how many parents rarely even play with their kids, or have their kids just watch TV or play games.  Look at how we view kids as "less than" in terms of ability to comprehend life and concepts - we as the adults limit the growth of the next generation.  

Quality Practise

When I took my first course to learn how to ride a motorcycle, I ended up being the top performer in the course.  I was also the only one who had never rode a bike - not even a dirt bike.  The Marine Corps invests a lot of funds into motorcycle training and I took advantage of as many of them as I could.  

After riding about 6 months, I noticed I was actually more competent than many of the bikers I met that had rode for decades.  I even passed a ST1000 with my 650 Yamaha V-Star (for you non-riders out there, I was riding a cruiser built for comfort and beat a sport bike) on a course requiring deep leans in the turns.  

This experience helped me understand that time spent is not necessarily an indicator of improvement.  I heard a podcast the other day from the Art of Manliness on this topic, and there was some great explanations as to why this is.  Essentially, many people do the same thing over and over.  They don't break down each function of what they are trying to improve.  

For instance, with bikes, there was a creepy abandoned development across the road from us that aside from drug deals at night was abandoned.  I would ride my bike on the roads, practicing slow turns, starting and stopping - all with minimal speed.  Anyone that rides knows that cornering is probably the most fun you can have on a bike, but only when you are moving.  Going slow is work and really not that much fun.  But I did that for months, ensuring I could control my bike without the advantage of speed.  

Then, in the courses, I readily took the instructions the teachers had as I didn't have any predisposition against it.  Many of the more "experienced" riders refused to take their tips and therefore did not improve.  They had become complacent and stubborn.  This meant that they just reinforced the same bad habits over and over.  

I also saw people who didn't understand how to train, they would do odd things like try to ride without hands or not lean in turns and so on.  They would target specific improvement points to work on - but they didn't validate their metric and solution.  They understood the concept of having a targeted and purposeful training session, but they missed the boat completely when it came to improvement.  

This means that as we develop ourselves, we need to ensure we have taken the correct advice and work on targeting specific improvement points so that we are not just spending time on our new hobby.  

Summary

All in all, I agree there are some genetic items that have influence on what we may do in this life, but I don't feel they are material enough to discuss.  Most things in life can be achieved with sufficient energy, focus and the ever important aspect of time.  I think we really struggle with that last one in this day and age, but its relevance has not been diminished with the advent of technology.