It wouldn’t have been given to you if you weren’t supposed to use it

If there is a secret talent for which we have no name, some gift that we have not employed to any useful purpose, do we have a moral obligation to use it?

Is it an insult to our inheritance to let that talent lay idle?

Maybe. There certainly is no ethics committee to check up on us. There is no law that says that we have to regift whatever we have inside of us. And there is no doubt that life is a blind and purposeless effect of billions of mundane and absurd events.

But setting all nihilism aside, why else would we have the damn thing? We may as well put it to work.

Now, some might label this kind of attitude pretentious. And maybe it is. But when did we decide that pretention was such a crime? When did the world become a place where we have this conflicted relationship with our most earnest aspirations?

Fox, the magazine editor who wrote a book about the virtue of pretentiousness, makes the point that pretention is always someone else’s crime:

It’s never a felony in the first person. Pretentiousness happens over there. But being pretentious is rarely harmful to anyone. Accusing others of it is. We can use the word pretentious as a weapon with which to bludgeon other people’s creative efforts, but in shutting them down the accusation will shatter in our hand and out will bleed our own insecurities, prejudices and unquestioned assumptions.

And that is why pretentiousness matters. It is a false note of objective judgment, and when it rings we can hear what society values in culture, hear how we perceive our individual selves.

Ain’t nothing shameful about having big dreams and believing in our gifts.

Ain’t nothing wrong with being heartfelt and loving big words and making art that makes no sense.

As long as we can laugh at ourselves along the way.

Have you given yourself permission to express each of your gifts to make a difference in all parts of your life?