I will proudly say that in Middle School, I was a part of my theater department’s production of High School Musical Junior. It was the beginning, peak, and end of my theater career (quit while you’re ahead, right?). I played Ripper. For those of you who don’t know who that is, I’m personally offended that you’re not familiar with my leading part of two lines and a gesture. Ripper was one of the people in the cafeteria that gave the most popular jock in school the moral support he needed to defy the expectations of other popular people (must have been a real struggle). Anyway, apparently this support needed to be given by me operating a cello. Yes, “operating” is a very fitting word to use because I don’t think I had ever really touched an instrument before then, yet alone a cello. And yes, when I accidentally touched the bow to the strings, it did make a horrendous noise that caused me to jump on stage multiple times.

I have never been-- and likely will never be-- able to play an instrument. For that reason, almost every instrument confuses and scares me. I’m not the greatest singer and I am slightly below adequate when it comes to most sports (except tennis and frisbee, at which both I am exceptionally bad). I don’t write in any monumentally life-changing way, as you are all probably aware of by now, and my photography skills fall in the “someone let a white girl loose with a camera” range.

Because of all this, I am one of those people that is easily impressed by any talent that I don’t have. If you can run quickly or for a long time, I’m impressed. If you can make a sound on an instrument that doesn’t remind me of a dying animal, I’m impressed. If you can make it through a physics problem without wanting to cry, I’m impressed.

And I think this is one of the best ways to live. Sure, a part of me wishes I could play an instrument or run for more than three minutes, but being good at everything takes away the magic. If everyone could paint, the Mona Lisa wouldn’t be so impressive. And if everyone could sing, powerful singers would be a dime a dozen and they wouldn't change the sound of a generation. But just because I can’t draw or play doesn’t mean I’m not talented. The problem is that such an emphasis is placed on these abilities as “worthwhile traits” that some people use them, or their lack of them, to define themselves. And even the people that are talented sometimes belittle themselves and give up. So I ask this of those of us without these talents: lift up your friends that are struggling to see their greatness. And those of you with them, support people like me in our pursuit of other, probably odd, things.