Improvement is not linear but staggering and fleeting and some days, cruel.

I think we tend to romanticize the prodigy because watching these generational few create and perform and exist with such unfathomable and unworldly talent, leaves us feeling closer to God or some higher power.

At least this is the feeling that overtakes me when I witness an athlete leap forty-five inches off the ground or gaze upon a 500-year-old masterpiece carved from marble with nothing but a hammer and chisel or listen to Beethoven’s legendary “Ode to Joy” which was written when the composer was completely and entirely deaf.

I know it’s a bit ignorant to say but when I experience talent of this kind, I can’t chalk it up alone to evolution but divine intervention.

However, the generational prodigy, in any given athletic or craft, is a dangerous and wicked inspiration to budding athletes, artists, writers and musicians who possess talent, deep within themselves, but must work harder and longer to tap into it.

For the rest of us, improvement in craft is not linear but staggering and fleeting and some days, cruel.

For the rest of us, improvement in craft doesn’t resemble a spaceship slingshotting to the moon but a rickety airplane desperately attempting to take flight.

My fear is that “the rest of us”, will set down our pen or brush or guitar, discouraged, before we’ve had the chance to leave the ground.

In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt or his body buckled from exhaustion, the more experienced and veteran workers would say…

“It is the trade entering his body.”

It’s a tragedy that athletes, artists, writers and musicians don’t have this perspective as they pursue their crafts today.

It’s a tragedy that talent, these days, is something to be expected rather than earned.

The past few months, I’ve been training Muay-Thai, Boxing and Krav Maga.

It didn’t take long for me to realize I wasn’t destined to be the next Muhammad Ali.

But, I kept working and working and working, four and sometimes five days a week.

One day, I hyper-extended my knee and was forced to take rest for a couple of weeks.

When I returned, I was striking harder and faster than I had before.

After my last session in the ring, I watched my boxing coach shake out his arms and shoulders and hands, smiling…

“You’re hitting hard.”

It was the phenomenon the tradesmen in working-class France were referring to so long ago.

It was the trade entering the body.

If you’re reading this, please, give yourself enough time for your trade to enter your body.

By Cole Schafer.

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Originally published at https://coleschafer.com on May 27, 2022.