Hard Work Vs. Talent

At my last night of work, I had a lengthy conversation with my manager about hard work vs. natural talent. He was the manager that I admired and respected the most, because he was very logical, and usually had meaningful things to say. One of the examples we talked about were track runners. A tall track runner who is as strong as a shorter one and as fast (relatively) will beat him because his legs take longer strides. Its common sense, but I thought about it alot that night, and for a brief moment, hard work didn't seem as important as it used to.

When you're younger you always get pep talks and encouraging lectures about how you can be anything you want to be, and that all it takes is hard work. Obviously this isn't always true, in fact many people will argue that its all about knowing powerful people (like Christine's earlier post), or simply having the talent for it (like my old manager). I believe that the "Cream always rises to the top", but talent isn't always everything. Over the years I learned it can be squandered, overrated, depended on too much, etc.

I thought about this stuff for the rest of that night, even while falling asleep. Are our lives written down for us when we're born? Does our talent ultimately shape our future? I believe it has a pretty large part to do with it, but there are other factors. I also do think our lives are written out,in sort of a n-ary tree structure, where each branch leading to "n" number of nodes, each possessing a probability of us choosing that path. That probability is not only based on talent, but also many of our social circumstances and influences. To say talent ultimately shapes your destiny would be like saying your social circumstances do; and there are a vast amount of examples contradicting that.