You don\u2019t have to be good.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t mean virtuous here. I do think it\u2019s important for all of us to do the best we can to be that kind of good..<\/p>\n
What I\u2019m talking about is talent and ability and the idea that we can\u2019t do things because we\u2019re not good at them.<\/p>\n
Of course we can do them. And we can keep doing them even if we never get \u201cgood\u201d enough to be a superstar.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll start with self defense. Far too many people \u2014 particularly, but not exclusively, women \u2014 believe they can\u2019t defend themselves, can\u2019t fight back.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not true. Everyone can learn some self defense skills. They\u2019re not particularly difficult or complicated.<\/p>\n
The best part: you don\u2019t have to be good. If you\u2019re ever actually attacked, a couple of quick strikes and running like hell will serve you very well.<\/p>\n
I know, because I\u2019ve done it, and believe me, at the time I was very far from good.<\/p>\n
The best part is that learning some skills like that gives you the confidence to stand up for yourself in the more common struggles of life, the ones that involve words and insults and gaslighting.<\/p>\n
Knowing that you can fight if you have to means you aren\u2019t likely to have to fight.<\/p>\n
Knowing that you don\u2019t have to be the super hero (which only happens in the movies anyway) or even a black belt makes that even easier.<\/p>\n
But this applies to more than self defense.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Say you want to dance, but you\u2019re told you\u2019re too clumsy or too tall or too fat or too male, so you never really get to try.<\/p>\n
Or you want to learn to draw, but on the first day of class the teacher insults your efforts.<\/p>\n
Maybe it\u2019s singing they say you can\u2019t do.<\/p>\n
Too often the rule seems to be that if you\u2019re not good at it, you don\u2019t get to do it.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s neither true nor fair.<\/p>\n
Now it is quite likely that if you take up any of these things you will never end up dancing with the Alvin Ailey Company or singing at Carnegie Hall or having your paintings on display at the Museum of Modern Art.<\/p>\n
But you know what: most of the people who were told they were good at those things will never hit that level either.<\/p>\n
Only a few people get recognized for their talents and there are many others who are very good who don\u2019t get picked.<\/p>\n
I mean, I know a lot of writers, many of them superb, and very few of them make their living from their words, much less win the most prestigious prizes. Even some of the ones who do win nice awards don\u2019t make much money.<\/p>\n
Include poets and the numbers are even worse. That doesn\u2019t mean you shouldn\u2019t write poetry.<\/p>\n
Now I do think if you take something up you should strive to learn to do it well enough so that you can improve over time. It will give you more pleasure if you develop some skill.<\/p>\n
But you still don\u2019t have to reach the level where everyone thinks you\u2019re \u201cgood\u201d to get something out of it.<\/p>\n
Doing things that you love is its own reward.<\/p>\n
So don\u2019t let anyone tell you you\u2019re not good enough to take care of yourself or write poems or run marathons or whatever else it is you want to do.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t have to be good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You don\u2019t have to be good. I don\u2019t mean virtuous here. I do think it\u2019s important for all of us to do the best we can to be that kind of good.. What I\u2019m talking about is talent and ability and the idea that we can\u2019t do things because we\u2019re not good at them. Of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,17],"tags":[187],"class_list":["post-2161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-experiences","category-rants","tag-talent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2161"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2164,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161\/revisions\/2164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}