The Gift of Enjoying the Gifted

Four posts ago we used the analogy of key and lock to illuminate the relationship between knowing and being, respectively. Not only does our key (intellect) fit into and open the lock (being), the very existence of this cosmic mankey is an important fact in its own right. 

Come to think of it, it must be the most important fact in all of existence, since there can be no knowledge of facts in its absence: in short, the world would be a locked door with no key. Which doesn’t make sense, because who creates a lock with no key, a safe with no combination, a joke with no punchline? 

All other animals are bereft of keys, but somehow we got hold of the very skeleton key that opens all locks. What gives? Darwin explained a lot, but what explains Darwin? And what or who made him so curious about nature?

We’ll get back to that question, but I woke up in the middle of the night with a related thought -- that the lock-and-key analogy also applies to the discovery and articulation of our soul, only in reverse. 

This goes back to something we discussed two posts ago, that a task of the soul is to discover its own nature -- its telos -- via objects, relationships, and spontaneous attractions in the environment. Here is what last Thursday’s Bob wrote about this:

Although we come into the world with a soul, we don’t come in with explicit knowledge of its content. Rather, it is a form -- the form of the body -- that has an implicit knowledge of what will come to be recognized as its content. In other words, our spontaneous attraction to this or that endeavor, or person, or discipline, will reveal ourself to ourselves (emphasis mine).

Therefore, it is very much as if our soul is the lock for which the world will furnish keys to open it. 

Think of, say, Mozart, who was obviously born with a musical soul. Lucky for him (and us), a means of discovery and expression was a right there waiting for him. His seven year old sister was taking lessons on it as three year old Wolfie looked on, writing that: 

He often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was ever striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good…. In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the clavier…. He could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time…. At the age of five, he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down (in wiki).

True, he was a genius, but that’s beside the point, which is that the piano was a lock Mozart seemingly picked with ease, even while his own soul was a lock the keyboard opened for him. 

Perhaps a more subtle point is that he also opened that lock for the restavus, in that we are all able to enjoy the sounds of Mozart unlocking the piano and the piano unlocking Mozart to himself.

Which reminds me of something my son asked the other day: is everyone born with a gift? He has a number of peculiarly specific gifts, which is not bragging, because I had nothing to do with them except to facilitate -- or at least not block — their discovery and expression.  

The question caused me to hesitate, because one doesn’t want to sound like some new-age happy-talk woke oil salesman: of course! Anyone can be Mozart or Einstein or Joe Biden! Your world is as big as your smallest dream! Theodore Herzel. State of Israel. If you will it, Dude, it is no dream!

Then I thought of a way of answering the question without implying the existence of billions of otherwise giftless people. 

Take me, for example. I suspect I may have been musically inclined, and my mom even tried to force me to take piano lessons when I was 9 or 10, but I resisted the attempt for understandable reasons of homophobia. My friends would be out in the street playing baseball while I was reluctantly walking to my piano lesson. Like any normal boy I preferred baseball. And rock music, not some limp-wristed alternative. 

If only it had been guitar lessons things might have turned out different, but we’ll never know. In any event, I nevertheless had a passion for music, and that too is a gift, only on the “receptive” as opposed to expressive side. 

Thus, I was able to provide a plausible answer to my son’s question: maybe we can’t all be geniuses -- which at first blush seems unfair in the trophies- and diplomas-for-everyone Age of Orquity -- but that hardly means we can’t enjoy geniuses.

Indeed, more often than not we can enjoy the genius more than the genius enjoys being one. Biographies of the Great Ones usually reveal a disconnect between the greatness of the gift and the rest of their lives. 

So, maybe I’ll never be Miles Davis or Art Pepper or Brian Wilson or Van Morrison or John Fahey or Bill Evans or Karen Carpenter (and dozens of others) but I sure enjoy their music, and I sure wouldn’t want to be them and have their problems. 

The world is full of the gifts the gifted ones left for our enjoyment, and the ability to enjoy them is gift enough. Besides,

Educating the soul consists in teaching it to transform its envy into admiration.

Which raises another question about the obvious inequality of civilizations and cultures, but that’s about it for today. Suffice it to say that I can enjoy jazz without begrudging the dominance of blacks, and baseball without accusing Dominicans of culturally appropriating so much hitting talent.