We are just people trying to get along... get on with life, its ups and downs, its wastes and disappointments, its boredom, and excitements. Who is to say one's talents is wasted? It takes hard work to develop a talent. Patience, perseverance, and persistence. If you really feel you've got a message to send out, it will come with only hard work.
One person can have many talents, they just don't know or realize it soon enough to do anything about it. I would argue that yes, sometimes it is too late. For example, sports talent is only for the young. The talent can only be developed when you are young. You don't see anyone older than 30 or 35 competing for money in any major sport. The rest, do it for fun and social reasons...really. Sports teach you things, intangible things that are transferable into a non-sports life. So learning is for life, even if sports aren't. I just don't understand parents who don't want their son or daughter to be involved in team sports at any age. It's fun! It develops social skills!! Sports develops kids in ways language and maths can't!! Studying is not fun. All work and no play makes Jack and Jill dull girls and boys.
Anyway, back to the mind and making a living. I'll concede that less than 1% of the population can make a living or have a life of Sports only, simply because the body just can't do it. At some point, they must retire. Whether that is at 16, 25 or 35 depends on the person and the sport. What happens after that is how the mind developed when they were younger... but the best sales people and politicians are mindless, instead they use their social skills. :-)
However, people who are both right-brained and left-brained are gifted and their talents don't waste away with age as easily as with sports. They are extremely talented but also extremely volatile. Guidance is difficult as they will always think they know best what is good for them. So things will get wasted. Hard work will go un-rewarded. But who is defining what "is wasted"?
This is the most callous thoughtless remark. "Don't waste your life". What in the world does this mean? If the person in question isn't a druggie, alcoholic, or other abuser, then anything they do will not be a waste. If the person is a doctor and for some reason can not practice, they will find something else productive to do, even if it doesn't save lives or generate tons of money. These "don't waste your life"-ers simply don't understand the interconnectedness of all things. It is a long running computer program and the bugs are still being worked out, so some waste is to be expected and not everything is going to be recycleable.
Perfection is not necessary, but hard work is. What is it that I would love to work at, hard work at? The answers and themes that keeps coming up to me now are... history, philosophy, art, human rights, writing, literature. Maths and engineering and medical devices seem to me just a hobby in comparison now. Any talent I've had for this previously seems to be leaving me as I can't remember stuff too much, I would have to go back and learn it all over again. That's the beauty of the mind, it is much more trainable than the body... but it may have its limits. Then again, now and then, you hear of 90 year olds doing amazing fantastic things... granted they much less than 1% of the population... I am somewhere in the average bell curve nowadays...
Sure I could work at a company, in research, communications, or manufacturing, and make good money. But I would be bored. I guess a lot of people out there are bored. Are they wasting their life? No, from one point of view. They are doing what they were trained to do, what they went to school for, what so many people supported them and sacrificed for them to be able to succeed. Ah, so it is about this prior sacrifice, eh? Not about the person in question.
Wars were fought so squeaky kids could speak their mind and have freedom, not to be told what to do and who to love and where to live. Lots of people died and sacrificed their lives and livelihoods. Sacrifice is everywhere in all of history of all of mankind. Whose dreams will live and whose will be sacrificed? What about happiness in all of this? Do we sacrifice our own happiness to make others happy? Is that our choice? Isn't that also a waste?
Perhaps we need to have perspective, away from this concept of "waste". That there is no right or wrong, there is no solution. No one will judge us, we judge ourselves with our conscience and character. Some who clearly do wrong in the international arena, believe themselves that they are doing the right thing for themselves.
Will we be judged in an afterlife? I think not. I am inclined to believe in a benevolent force of living people, not a fictitious external ethereal all-knowing all-powerful being. I think the all-knowing could be here on Earth, if we all (all 6 billion of us) worked together for common goals -- peace, non-violence, non-competition, non-greed.
Yeah, I am turning into a hippie again! I like that me. I am learning to love me again. This is becoming one of the best parts of this re-invention process -- to learn to be me and not worry about what others think or how much waste there is. Listen to Bruce Springsteen. "The Price You Pay"....Tear it down and throw it away.
