On Determination

Of all the unex­pect­ed sources of inspi­ra­tion, this morn­ing takes the cake. I was read­ing a six-month-old copy of Read­er’s Digest with an inter­view with Will Smith. Some­thing he said brought me back twen­ty years:

RD: You work hard­er than the next guy?
Fresh Prince: I con­sid­er myself to be of basi­cal­ly aver­age tal­ent, right? What I have that oth­er peo­ple do not have is a sick, obses­sive, raw ani­mal drive.

I used to resent being told I have tal­ent. To me, tal­ent was some­thing nat­ur­al-born, some­thing that did not have to be worked at. I knew, as I know today, that if I sit down at the draw­ing board that some­thing good is just going to nat­u­ral­ly flow out of me. It takes exer­tion, and will, and prac­tice, and study, and even then my hand does not just auto­mat­i­cal­ly fol­low my intent; it requires atten­tion and care. When I heard that I was tal­ent­ed, I resent­ed the impli­ca­tion that the work I did reflect­ed some­thing oth­er than hard work.

The mean­ing of tal­ent is still unclear. Per­haps it refers to earned abil­i­ty as well as a gift. Per­haps tal­ent is that which makes one will­ing to endure the hard­ship of devel­op­ing an ability.

I do believe in nat­ur­al abil­i­ty, and of course nat­ur­al abil­i­ty is not enough to guar­an­tee suc­cess in any field. Even those with nat­ur­al abil­i­ty must work hard at what they do. Accept­ing that I am a per­son of aver­age tal­ent means that ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment are nec­es­sary just to get by. If the last decade is any indi­ca­tion, just get­ting by is not enough.

RD: Have you always been a runner?
Fresh Prince: I start­ed about five years ago. Run­ning intro­duces you to your worst ene­my, to that per­son who tells you «Ooh, our ankles hurt and we should stop. Why do we need to run five miles? Let us run three.» That is the same per­son who says to the man, «Hey, your wife will nev­er find out if you sleep with her,» and the same per­son who tells the 16-year-old, «You are not gonna be cool if you don’t smoke it.» If you start giv­ing in to that per­son you will nev­er get to your goals.

It would be sus­pi­cious to hear some­one claim that they’d nev­er giv­en in to that worst ene­my, but this point is well taken.

So I ran today. And instead of a lit­tle less than four miles, I ran a lit­tle more than six. It might well have been the most dif­fi­cult six miles I’ve done, as there is some­thing wrong with my breath­ing and it’s been keep­ing me from run­ning for about six months. I learned that «that per­son» Smith referred to can run just as fast as I can; he was in my ear the whole way and he did­n’t once shut up. I ran through the wheez­ing and the legs that have grown  unac­cus­tomed to push­ing me along, and the blis­ters that devel­oped on my feet.

This proved an impor­tant point: that will over­comes dis­com­fort. Some­thing that is already well-known, but eas­i­ly for­got­ten, espe­cial­ly by those of us of only aver­age courage. I can but won­der if a dai­ly bap­tism in fire is the only way to keep this knowl­edge in the fore­front of consciousness.