I love this quote: “Lots of people have talent, darlin’. But look how many people throw it away. It boils down to this: having talent is not enough. You also have to have a talent for having talent.” – Ruth Gordon

There are so many people whom we come into contact throughout our life time that can have unbelievable talent but they either have no interest in pursuing that talent or simply don’t have the drive. My brother comes to mind with this. My brother has a learning disability called Dyslexia. He was so bad that when he was in Kindergarten they said he was retarded. But he wasn’t. My Aunt Janine was a teacher who taught Slingerland, a special way for children with Dyslexia to be able to learn the way they need to. My aunt tested him and sure enough he did have it. So she had him come live with her for the next three years where he could get this special education. The amazing turn around was practically unbelievable. His IQ was off the charts, especially in math. He was just so darn smart. All he needed was a little TLC to make it.

The summer between his 7th and 8th grade year, he was awarded the special opportunity to go to Sac State (California State University of Sacramento) to be part of a summer program for math. He excelled so high back then. He took a PSAT and his scores were all so high. I think his verbal was like a 500 out of 600 and his math was a 550 out of 600. He had a very promising road ahead of him.

However, as he got to be into high school he got in with the wrong crowd. He began to do drugs. To this day he still struggles with his drug addiction. All of the talent he had he’d given up. It’s sad to look back on but you can’t do something for someone else no matter how badly you want it for them. I love my brother with all my heart and will always pray that someday he might wake up to finally make the decision to stay off the drugs.

As for me, I will continue to work toward my goal of writing both my fiction and my nonfiction book. I know that just because I may have talent doesn’t mean that if I just sit around and do nothing that it will magically create itself. I have to work at to make it better and continue trying to learn as much as I can to make everything just that much better.

So, do you know of someone who’s had talent and then they persevered to improve that talent to the best of their ability or do you know someone who went the opposite way?