In third grade I was exposed to the world of anime when Naruto aired on toonami on Cartoon Network. It was the first time I saw a cartoon that was taken seriously, and that took itself seriously. The violence, the friendships, the super powers. I instantly fell in love. I am convinced I learned most of what I know about the world from Naruto. One of the more serious problems presented by the show was the conflict between those who work hard versus those who are talented. This is shown during the third phase of the chunin exam, which was a tournament between the ninjas who had made it thus far in the exam. The two ninjas fighting that brought up this issue were named Rock-Lee and Gaara. Rock-Lee was a ninja with no super powers, that relied solely on the strength of his body, which he worked tirelessly day in and day out to strengthen. This was a severe disadvantage in this world because there were others who could do things, such as being able to manipulate sand. This was Gaara’s ability. He was able to control sand and use it to create nearly impenetrable shields around himself, and could use it to attack people without moving a muscle. Why am I rambling about this? Because it made me ask an important question: Why would anyone work hard at whatever they do if they know someone will always be born more talented?
It comes down to the way we derive meaning from things. When stuck in our minds, and looking toward infinity, it’s easy to view many things as meaningless. However, when we work hard on something, it puts us in the present because we need to use all the power of our minds to connect our bodies to a certain skill to better ourselves at it. This attaches time to our actions. We’re counting the time we put into a certain skill, and that in a way makes it meaningful. You didn’t spend that time thinking of the infinite possibilities that extend from each moment; you acted, and that’s important.
To contrast, the person who is innately talented probably does not have the privilege of deriving meaning from their accomplishments. A person being talented implies they didn’t practice, or put in much time to learn. They didn’t challenge themselves and didn't use everything their mind had to offer. Therefore, there is still room to look out into infinity and ask whether or not they wasted their time.
At the end of the day, if approval from other people is what you’re after, hard work is usually the way to go. No one likes Gaara at that point in the show. He was scary and used his talent to terrorize others. However, we find something remarkably human about Rock-Lee’s struggle to defy the odds the world around him created. We want to see him improve and overcome because that’s usually what we want for ourselves. We want to find the strength to overcome.
