“The super carrier, USS Enterprise is the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and the eighth U.S. Naval vessel to bear the name. It has a power projection of 20,000 miles radius…”
This was what I saw glaring in my brother's computer monitor during a visit (actually an emergency errand) to his house. I went there summoning his almighty aid (and sacrificing my Thesis Class) for a Public Relations Plan assignment.
To his (and his wife's) surprise, I arrived there with hardly any research at all. I was there ready to make a pair of shoes out of shoe laces. Another classic case of “silly younger brother did not use his brain again”.
But still, my brother taught me. It was part-breakfast talk, part-business lecture, and part-class discussion. As a whole, it was the Sermon on the Mount Zion.
I’d almost developed a growing interest on this field (which I know will not progress because of my dysfunctional propensity towards mathematics). At the end of the Sermon, he told me:
“You should have taken Business (Management. Or any goddamn course connected to it) instead.”
Of course, as what would a full pledge Servant of Journalism with iron-clad faith to its principles and tenets will do, I retracted with great pride and tremendous courage:
“I can't. I am into writing. This is my talent. I was born with this. It’s innate in me.”
But my brother is not ready to give up. In his usual, arrogant, pragmatic, downplaying, I-presume-you-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about-kid-so-you’d-better-go-home tone, he unleashed his counter-attack (in his usual, thick, fluent American-English accent, of course):
“So you think you have talent in writing? And it’s innate in you?
“Yes!”
I answered, gulping my saliva through my throat. The great pride and tremendous courage I possessed seemed to evolve into some microscopic, insignificant entity. Or maybe it had gone with my saliva.
“Whoever told you that talent is innate; introduce him to me. Or better yet, just tell him ‘Go and take a hike.’.”
And next is a discourse that gradually (and painfully) debacles my hard-earned beliefs. Principles that I had held-on during my entire learning years. I am a block of ice facing the desert sun.
“People are not born with talent in them. Each human being is born with only a single trait called urge. During his primitive years, this is the only thing he holds on. The urge to survive. The urge to live. The urge to learn. The urge to dominate above all living things.
"As man progresses, this urge turns to learning. Learning becomes knowledge. This knowledge turns into habit. And, through life long practice and serious mastery, this habit turns into talent. It gives you the illusion that you are born with it because it somehow gotten into you. You mastered it and made it your second nature.
"Because of this urge, man was able to create many things to secure his place among other species and among other men as well. He was able to create something like the USS Enterprise. This sanctimonious macro-machine has a power-projection of 20,000 miles radius. Meaning it can nuke out and literary liquidate anything(or anyone) within its 20,000-mile radius. Talent alone cannot do that. The urges do.”
It may be hard to admit, but he has lot of reasons to say that.
Nick de Guzman, a six-foot something mountain of muscle, packs better genes, and pride of our family, is a product of the Corporate World. From being a humble graduate of Computer Programming, he had gone through gazillions of seminars, workshops and other tedious trainings. He had jumped from one field to another, from Computer Sciences, to Information Technology, to Marketing Stratagems, to Corporate Management, to Business, to Financial Disciplines, at the same time hoping from one country to another, training other Asians in the same field (who would ironically someday rule over us, economically and geopolitically speaking).
The Corporate World, being ruled with corporate Big-Whigs, expert bureaucrats, and financially-inclined peddlers, do not care with people who have talents, those possessing innate but limited skills. What matters to them are those who can, and who will do different range of things at command. People who had amassed different skills through experience. Versatility and multi-tasking is the keyword here. Talent is only something you can put to your curriculum vitae to make it look good. But everything in the real work is beyond the paper.
It is the urge. The urge to survive the Corporate Jungle. The urge to live its ways and expectations. The urge to learn its mechanics and working systems. And the urge to dominate this domain, above everyone else. These are the things that matters most.
After a few minutes of head-aching, nose-bleeding thinking and meditation, I finally made my PR Plan, with hardly any research at all. I made shoes out of shoe-laces. At least I can declare to myself, with great pride and tremendous courage, I am talented.
I believe I deserve the benefit of the doubt here.
For more about career paths and career confusions, check Ephemeral Dreams in Transient Worlds and its continuation, When Impermanence is God.
1 comment:
Amen to your brother. I really love this statement:
"As man progresses, this urge turns to learning. Learning becomes knowledge. This knowledge turns into habit. And, through life long practice and serious mastery, this habit turns into talent. It gives you the illusion that you are born with it because it somehow gotten into you. You mastered it and made it your second nature."
Nice post. You should try reading Outliers. The author explains why there are people more successful compare to others, why people have the skills than the rest.
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