Quote Originally Posted by lph View Post
sure. I just meant that people don't necessarily mean it literally.

Actually, if you think about it it's worse that the phrase implies that this talent just "happened" to a person and that it has nothing to do with hard work and dedication..
Yeah. I wasn't going to say it, but since you did, I agree. I HATE it when people talk about a talent as being "a gift from god". I saw an episode of "Touched By an Angel" - a show, btw, which I absolutely abhorred - where a poet's gift was attributed to her being able to hear the words that god was giving her and then writing it down on paper. So basically she was a glorified steno machine. E.g., god was whispering words in this woman's ear, so it had nothing to do with intestinal fortitude, hard work, or clear insight. She was just copying down what god told her. Like we're all just puppets reading the lines given to us. BLEAH!

Grrrr! True, you have to have some inborn talent to be a truly great singer or painter or whatever. But it's only hard work that polishes and hones an inborn talent to genius. That's the difference between your friends telling you how good your voice is, and the world telling you how good your voice is.