Equality In Easiness

I was talking with a friend tonight about our abilities. I told my friend that I was impressed by her resilience and determination, coupled with her kindness. She replied, "So do you though... and it doesn't come easy for you. Things come easy for me - I am naturally resilient and forgiving - most people aren't."

I told her, "Just because things don't come easy doesn't mean they don't become easy."

I could be wrong but I am fairly certain that, no matter how difficult it is to acquire a skill, once it has been acquired it loses its difficulty.

When I say "acquire", I mean to internalize it. You can do something before you have acquired the skill to do it. So, to an extent, acquiring something removes its difficulty by definition.

Still, the point lies elsewhere. The point is that some people are born with particular abilities either fully acquired or extremely close to being acquired. For those people, doing such abilities, like doing math in their head, is easy. For everybody else, it will be a struggle, perhaps a grueling struggle to be able to do math in your head. It may take a library of tips and tricks and techniques to do process numbers and store them all. It also may require hours upon hours of raw practice to develop and internalize those abilities. But once they have been internalized, they are now just as easy as they are for the person born with that ability.

I do not doubt that talent exists. I see people, some of whom can spin a yarn in casual conversation, and others who couldn't string two cogent sentences together to save their lives. But I will never believe that a given person can't become an excellent storyteller.

Whether you are born with latent talent or you have to read and write and practice and rewrite to gain the abilities that other people are born with, the fact of the matter is that you will reach a point where it becomes easy (or at least easier). At that point, all professionals are equal.