I. J. Singh | New York, NY Posted: 10:48 AM | January 18, 2012

Talent: Arrogance and Modesty

As you peruse my ruminations today both the title and the content may rub many the wrong way. That’s not the intent. Some matters are universal and no one remains immune for long.

I often think that we are born with a debt on our shoulders. Our legacy has offerings that are both good and bad. We curse the bad – from the weather and environmental pollution to disease and war that ravage our existence. Petty injustices are legion. That is why some sage recognized that life isn’t fair. It never was nor will it ever be. We come with an endless list of ills and plaints – our own individual ones as well as the societal Pandora’s Box -- as we enter our mortal existence and begin our earthly journey.

We also inherit the good that life offers us but didn’t come from our dint. Just think of the opportunities and technology that life offers today – products of previous generations – that make life the rich presence that it is. These we take for granted. Sometimes life’s rewards are blindly and amply bestowed and then we come to expect them as entitlements. We pout, we moan and groan when we are deprived of them.

We often think that we deserve to be born with a silver spoon in our mouth. Let the wooden ladle be for those who are clearly lesser mortals.

Hubris? We dismiss the charge. How could that be if rewards of life are deserved? Surely, we deserve the best.

We all have some abilities, however limited, talents that are useful and cannot be denied, and ways to leave the world a better place than when we came into it. And that, of course, is the only way to lessen the burden of debt that we started with in life.

It is from talent, usefully and methodically exercised, that a sense of self emerges and develops. But surfeit of talent can morph into a sense of exceptionalism. This is not so miraculous or unusual a transformation. And then we are in the quicksand of believing that the rules don’t apply to us. One can find claims of exceptionalism by individuals, communities, religions as well as nations.

There is no delivery from this mire until and unless we recognize the beginning and the end of our talents. Ergo, most spiritual movements teach that we regard our special abilities and the talents that we have as gifts of grace - God given, not earned.

All human potential movements, whether religions or not, teach the existence and acceptance of human frailty and fallibility but teaching is one thing while learning remains a very different kettle of fish.

More often than not, the problem lies in recognizing and acknowledging that in our multi-layered life, the foundational element that is talent comes like manna from heaven, the layer of arrogance topping the cake is a product of our own efforts.

The work of learning this idea requires perseverance and effort but it is where attitude makes the critical difference. Learning this lesson requires that we see similar (not always the same) talent in others, too. The abilities of others may be entirely different from ours but they do exist and deserve opportunity, recognition and reward just as much as ours do.

But our inability to see this in others is legion. Such issues arise but a zillion times in the best of us. Why do we remain so blind to others?

Sir Isaac Newton was a genius and a deeply religious man whose solid grounding in humility emerges unmistakably in his oft-quoted words, “I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell, whilst the great ocean lay undiscovered before me.” And also, “If I have been able to see further, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants.”

Yet, he, too, got caught up in enduring disputes on plagiarism and credit for his work with Hooke, until the latter’s death in 1703, and with Leibniz on the development of Calculus until this foe’s death in 1713.

The justly celebrated wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, of Great Britain, with his bravado and arrogance would never have willingly presided over the dissolution of the British Empire. It took Clement Attlee to do so -- a modest man that Churchill quipped had much to be modest about.