The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do

saw the cars race across the screen, he lit up—and ever
since, he’s loved it.
Was there something innate in Aiden, something maybe
even God-given, that made him love that movie? I don’t
know. That’s not really the point. What I do know is that his
attraction to a cartoon says something to me about my son:
Aiden has a personality. And with that unique personality
comes a destiny that is all his own, one independent of
external circumstances and upbringing. Sure, his mom and I
can influence him, and his friends can rub off on him, and
his genes may dictate the extent of certain abilities, but that
is not where his future ends. It’s where it begins. There will
always be those “spark” moments when who he is and what
he is meant to be shine through.
No one illustrates this better than Garrett Rush-Miller, the
boy whose handicap proposed severe limitations on his life.
At five years old, he was blind and unable to walk, and the
doctors were skeptical of how long he would live. And yet,
the moment he touched that tandem bicycle, everything
changed. He “lit up,” according to his dad. That was his
spark.
Our natural talent, or lack thereof, is not enough. Neither
is practice. Some skills will seem to come naturally while
others have to be developed. We can try a lot of things, but
some we will do better than others, and some failures are not
challenges to overcome but signs of what we shouldn’t be
doing. But what we must have before any of this is an initial
spark, that moment of inspiration when we, too, light up.