I wish to draw your attention to a creature that absolutely does not exist – the talentless clod.

The talentless clod is a mythical being that has absolutely no talent whatsoever. It has no potential for skill. It is utterly inept at everything it attempts, if it attempts anything at all. All its works are doomed to absolute failure, and the only thing it ever succeeds at is creating utter catastrophes.

Of course, such a concept is ludicrous. This creature simply does not exist – it cannot exist – but many people believe that it does. Why?

These poor deluded souls belive themselves to be talentless clods.

Well, I’m going to dispel that notion once (if not for all). Hold on to whatever sturdy object you might happen to find nearby, because you’re about to get a torrential downpour of rainbows and butterflies and maybe a few dead bats mixed in. Not sure how those got in there.

Talentless Clods Are a Statistical Impossibility

Consider the possibilities. All of the possibilities. As many as your mind can imagine. Imagine all possible things a person can attempt to do, then all things a team of people might do, and how much as been accomplished by the puny arm of man.

Of course, it’s easy to think of grand achievements and inspirational works and whatnot. That’s all on the surface level, though. That’s the so-called “high end” of the scale. Now look at the everyday stuff people do. Think of the people you see around you on a daily basis and how you might imprint on their lives in small but powerful ways. Maybe you smile at them. Maybe a wave. Maybe a glare that makes them shudder in fear, giving them a fun story to tell their friends later and earning yourself a place of honor in their nightmares. You need only prod a little, and the lives of countless others can be influenced.

Consider the sheer range of possibilities at all levels of scale, from building a jet engine down to tossing bread crumbs to some birds, and then down even further to a simple drawing of a line in the dirt, telling yourself that this is where your boundaries lie. Then consider that amid so many levels of scale, there are near limitless subscales with more possibilities within those subscales.

It’s more than anyone could count. Amid all those possibilities that your mind can conceive of, there are countless more that you haven’t even considered yet. At any moment, you could do something that no one (not even yourself) would anticipate. Failing at absolutely all of them is a statistical impossibility.

Failure Is an Illusion

Amid so many possibilities, how is it even remotely likely that you could be destined to fail at every single one? There is bound to be something that you can do to make this world a little better, and it doesn’t take nearly as much as you might think it does.

As long as you keep trying at some random thing in some new way, being a total failure is a statistical impossibility.

The only way to truly fail at anything is to give up. If you believe in total failure, then you believe that you only have a finite number of opportunities to try, and that you have already blown all of them.

Look in the mirror. Are you dead? No? Still got a pulse? Then you haven’t blown all your opportunities. You haven’t tried everything you can try. You haven’t failed yet because you haven’t died yet (and even then, dying is no guarantee of failure anyway – look how many authors were widely published posthumously, for instance).

Failure, therefore, is an illusion. It is an insidious lie. It is a false sectarian notion.

Sure, you might need some rest every now and then. In fact, you will need breaks. Frequent breaks. Naps are wonderful things. But that’s not the point of this blog post.

The point is you can always try at something new, no matter how old you are or how many things you’ve already attempted.

Try Something New, No Matter How Small

Of course, you might be better adapted to some things than others. Trying a breadth of different things is the key to finding what you’re maybe sort of decent at. More importantly, it’s the key to finding stuff you truly enjoy doing.

If you keep doing something you love, you’ll get better at it. It’s inevitable.

So try lots of stuff. You may be surprised at what takes your fancy.

You Don’t Have to Think Big

Finally, we often see talents as these great things that inspire awe in others. However, not all talents work like that.

The most profoundly impactful talents may not be the sort of thing you perform at events or showcase in displays or prove on exams. A talent may be as simple as a wonderfully warm smile or the ability to speak kind words or to have an understanding heart.

It may be the ability to weather storms or lift others or be a loyal friend. It may be the power to weep when it is time to weep or to smile when the going gets tough. It could be a laugh that carries on to others or the ability to have joy in splashing in rain puddles.

It can be joy in simple things, or it can be power to express that joy to others.

Often, these talents are the most powerful of them all.

So never again should you tell yourself (or anyone else, for that matter) that you (or they) are a talentless clod. Such a creature does not exist, and if it does, it is only a fabrication of some communal lie that enough people have decided to believe in for some odd reason.

The Astral Wanderer is brought to you by torrential downpours of butterflies and rainbows, possibly intermingled with a few dead bats. To support more of whatever this was, share this with your friends or leave a comment. Doing so keeps the dead bats at bay. Really.