TALENT

Martin Ritt was one of the great, but also according to many critics unsung, movie directors of all time. Ritt knew talent when he saw it and he knew how to use that talent to make great movies. He worked with stars like Laurence Harvey, Paul Newman, Claire Bloom, Edward G. Robinson. He won acclaim for movies like The Great White Hope (earning Oscar nominations for James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander), Sounder, and Norma Rae (Oscar for Sally Field as Best Actress).

Ritt knew talent. What perhaps set him apart was his view of talent. He once observed, “I don’t have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic. It’s what you do with it that counts.” And isn’t that the truth? Talent is indeed genetic. Every one of us who has ever dreamed of doing something we cannot understands that truth. We desire what we do not have but wish we did.

As is well-known by now, my greatest desire as a youngster was to play first base for the Pittsburgh Pirates. As is also known, I got cut from my Little League team because I was that bad. I had no talent to play baseball. In my head I was certain that I was good.   I also believed that if I just worked hard enough, practiced long enough, had that great desire to succeed, my dreams would come true. My Little League manager and subsequent failures in playing baseball taught me, begrudgingly, the truth.

Of course, some of my pals growing up were very talented baseball players and I envied them. None of them ever made it to the Major Leagues or even the Minors. But they did use their abilities, their talents, to take them as far as they could go playing baseball and then they moved on in life. Some of them, I suspect, like me, thought they had more talent than they did and, like me, had to learn the hard way: they got cut from the team.

We all have our special talents. They are genetic. They are God-given. It is useless to ask why we have the talents we do. We simply have them from birth through our genes. It is also useless to ask why we don’t have the talents we wish we had but simply do not. That is also the result of our genes and thus beyond our control. What is important and what, in the final analysis is the only thing that really matters, as Ritt observed, is what we do with those talents.

We know that, of course. We know people who don’t fulfill their potential, who don’t use their talents to the best of their abilities. Some of those people are you and I. As talented and gifted as we are, we still know that any talent has to be fostered. The greatest ball players, actors, teachers – you name it – became great not because they were the most talented but because they used whatever talents they had to the very best of their abilities.

Again, the talents that we have, each one of us, are indeed genetic but, most importantly for us as Christians, God-given. While we may wonder why we have the gifts we do and wonder why we don’t have the gifts we might like to have, in the end, what matters to God, what matters to others and what should matter to us as well, as Ritt has said, what really counts, is we do with  those talents and gifts.