Your Gifts Are Not Optional
On expression, resistance, and the responsibility to be who you are
I’ve known some people with serious talent. Not the hypothetical kind—or the “my mom says I’m good at this” kind—but the real thing.
Obvious ability. Good taste. Killer instincts.
The kind of people who make you question your own talents. The kind of people who get you naturally excited about theirs…without even trying.
Musicians, artists, teachers, builders, inventors, writers, creators, and curators.
But in many cases, it never moved beyond potential.
Abraham Maslow described the Jonah Complex, a fear of one’s own potential. Steven Pressfield writes about resistance, the force that keeps you from doing your life’s work. And Julia Cameron (author of The Artist’s Way) describes the concept of shadow artists, creative individuals who orbit their creative realm, but never fully claim it as their own.
Different ideas, but all circling a similar tension.
People don’t lack talent. They stall at the threshold of using it.
It’s easy to point the finger at lack of discipline, resources, or time. And sure, sometimes there’s a kind of avoidance there—a reluctance to commit, or a desire for absolute certainty before effort.
Perhaps they say:
“I don’t know what to choose.”
“Passion won’t pay the bills.”
“I guess I haven’t figured it out yet.”
“There are already lots of people doing it.”
“I don’t want to spend the time if it isn’t going to pay off.”
Sometimes, there’s another element at play.
Mastery used to be something you pursued off-camera. You practiced in private, experimented quietly or in limited, low-stakes settings, developed skill away from global scrutiny, and revealed it when you were ready.
Many of us weren’t trained to create in public, or share our messes and mistakes. We were trained to share something polished, finished, and the result of genuine skill and practice.
At the same time, the landscape has shifted in another way: Modern tools have made it easier than ever to produce something passable, or “good enough”—making it harder to want to pursue true mastery of anything at all.
So now you’re caught between two pressures: Be visible before you’re ready…or question whether it’s even worth getting great in the first place.
It’s not that people today are less capable. It’s that the conditions of starting have changed. The process is more visible. The comparisons are immediate.
So showing up now requires a different kind of courage than it used to.
And most people would rather stay in the mental comfort of potential than risk being seen struggling in progress.
Read: What We Fear When We Create.
But here’s the thing:
Even if your concerns are very real, they don’t make your gifts optional.
Even with all the visibility, the pressure, and the noise—the responsibility doesn’t go away. Because avoiding your gifts doesn’t actually protect you. It just delays you.
At some level, it’s not really a matter of choice. Call it wiring, personality, instinct, the universe, or God. There is something in you that wants expression, and ignoring it has very real consequences.
“Unused creativity is not benign. It metastasizes. It turns into grief, rage, judgment, sorrow, shame.” —Brené Brown
You can absolutely choose not to pursue your gifts. But the cost is a life that feels slightly off.
Less expressed. Less alive.
Less you.
This isn’t a conversation about turning your gifts into your profession. There’s a lot more nuance to that (and no shame in how it unfolds).This is about something simpler, and more fundamental: not ignoring what’s in you to express.
Expression doesn’t require permission. And it doesn’t require an audience.
Honoring your gifts also doesn’t mean turning your life on its head or having a perfect plan. It doesn’t mean going full-force into a curated image or producing nonstop content for the sake of it.
It can look a lot simpler than that:
recording an idea instead of letting it pass
writing something small
practicing your craft for an hour
making something without knowing if it will go anywhere
creating a dedicated space for your creative work
Honoring your gifts isn’t about image, certainty, control, or eliminating the risk of failure. It’s about the bravery to show up, and keep showing up—without guarantees.
It’s the resolve to show up because it’s who you are. Not because of payoff, pride, comparison, expectation, or status.
I made that decision for myself when I started this newsletter. I chose to write for the sake of the craft and the ideas—not for a specific outcome.
I haven’t always been consistent. I’m still far from where I want to be.
But I keep showing up.
At some point, you have to decide: Are you going to honor the gifts that you’ve been given or keep postponing them?
If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably have to make that decision again and again—across different seasons, and sometimes across different forms.
It’s not comfortable. It’s not easy. But it matters.
Because your gifts aren’t optional. You can ignore them for a while, but you can’t outrun them.
“And most people would rather stay in the mental comfort of potential than risk being seen struggling in progress.”
There’s a hard truth breathing inside that line, one that most of us recognize but try not to sit with too long. Comfort, especially the kind wrapped in possibility, feels safe. It asks nothing of us. It lets us imagine a better version of ourselves without ever having to test it against reality. But that same comfort becomes a quiet form of complacency, and over time, it begins to suffocate creativity and strip away the very beauty we’re capable of bringing into the world.
Struggle is different. It is not comfortable, and it is rarely graceful, but it is honest. It is the fire that shapes. What we avoid is often the very thing that builds us. Steel is not formed in ease; it is forged in heat, hammered, stressed, and refined. The same is true for people. If we never allow ourselves to be seen in progress, imperfect and unfinished, we never become what we were meant to be.
There is no strength without the fire, and you need that fire in your belly to create.