Prodigy

I must be a prodigy of some sort. There must be something I can do better than any one else, or maybe just something no one else is capable of. I’ve always been drawn to skill. I’m fascinated by watching someone who has mastered something. I suppose we all feel it – if only there was one thing we did supremely well then the rest of our life would be simple. That central skill would bring everything into focus. It would be the sun pulling the wayward planets of our mundane existence into rational orbit. And it would seem so easy. People would gasp as we performed our master-work, played out that perfect part of our lives. Everything else would follow from that automatically – security, happiness, self-esteem.
But those things are so difficult, I mean anything that could actually transform us and free us takes so much work. You can’t just decide to be a great musician or painter. You can’t even guarantee you’ll be an average one. You could put so much work into something just to find it all fell apart and you’d wasted that time.
Or then again what if that thing you put at the centre of your life began to eat away at you? What if it became a poison, destroying you instead of making you happy? Easy to recoil, just to stay as you are. Mediocre. Unspecial. Useless.
No, I’m bringing myself down here. I’m ruining it for myself again. We are in control after all. I tell you what I love: manifestos. They really get me going. Something so cool about writing some short treatise explaining just how wrong everyone else is and then just sitting back and waiting for the world to freak out. Marx and Engels, Valerie Solonas, the Unabomber! And they didn’t just leave it there. No way. Putting your manifesto into fully terrifying action, that’s the key to it all. And perhaps that’s a way round my whole expertise hang-up. Just manifesto-up some easy thing, make it so notorious, and then bang! You’ve got their attention at last.
Flipside to this. A parallel, an inverse of it. Something like that. I suppose I’ve always dreamed of a technique, or a technology, or just a thing that would sort it all out. You know how people get – one month it’s Yo-yos. Every kid has got one and they are playing with them all the time. As if that is the only thing necessary to make one happy. Just the action of moving the thing up and down string. Okay, you learn tricks too, but basically the pleasure is simply in the thing going down and up. No need to impress anyone with something like that. You are totally focused on that one simple activity. That could be a way of life. If something simple could be that satisfying, permanently. Because that’s the catch with all that stuff. Given a month or so and no-one’s interested. The yo-yos are in a cupboard somewhere, untouched.