Everyone wants to be a prodigy. Our culture and generation idolize God-given talent above all else. We’re all waiting for our “gifts” to be discovered — by our industry, by our peers, and even by ourselves. But it’s not long before you’re 30 and you realize you still don’t know how to play the cello. You’ve never looked at a piano and it just made sense to you.
Win, lose, or draw, there’s something respectable about diving headfirst into something — going for it. The great Annie Dillard puts it nicely: “You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.” It’s the tension between gravity and impact that forces us to get creative, build processes, and maybe even escape disaster. Because, let’s face it, there’s nothing quite as motivational as imminent failure.
