Oh the futility of it all

Oi , when you walk down that road , be you a prince or a pauper or a sheikh for that matter , all your moolah cannot hold to ransom the hack of the guillotine that shall come down on your oblongata . So go forth and live and don't care, for fair is foul and foul is fair .

This began as a serious argument , but now , I just don't know .

While child prodigies, precocious individuals who show early signs of excelling in specific domains ,do exist such individuals are far and few and the possibility of finding them may be one in a million . Without hard work such individuals would not achieve the greatness they are destined for . 

Most of the people in general have very minor difference in their innate talent for specific domains and with dedicated hard work can achieve designated levels of expertise in the fields of their interest (given that they are not physically or mentally unfit for the field in question )

While I do accept the fact (mostly because of lack of examples to the contrary) that certain very exceptional individuals (Terrence Tao , chris langan , Arthur wiles , Perelman) exist my stand on this highly debatable and controversial topic is merely this , with the right amount of goal oriented hard work any individual with normal physical and mental capacities can achieve a level of expertise in a field of their interest . While they might not stand a chance against the exceptionally endowed individuals listed above ,who are very few in number, they can match the performance (if there exists a way of quantifying it) of individuals outside the above spectrum .

I take this stand because too many times in my lifetime I have come across situations where people around me have given up on hard work because they believe that they are not innately talented enough for a particular task , may it be sports , mathematics , physics or the like . And also because I have found people giving lack of talent or the presence of innate talent in others as a reason for their success or failure . As Nietzsche said " To call someone divine means , here we do not have to compete ."  

I do admit that at different points in life , people do differ in their abilities for different fields but that difference is not attributable to innate talent but rather to the amount of hard work that the more able have put in till that point of time . And I desist the fact that the less able tend to simplify the dedication of others and lump it together into natural talent . 

I put forward this question to a friend of mine who was a supporter of the opposite cause " What would you like to tell your young child in this regard , that if he worked hard he could compete with the best in the world or that if he has the talent he will , otherwise he won't " He answered in favour of the first option but said that he would be lying in doing so .

 There are too many times we lie hoping it is the truth ; I can imagine a lot of parents doing that and that has made all the difference .

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The importance of certain activities is at times shrouded in our perceived aim of excelling at them . 

What is the aim of juggling a football ? Is it to keep the ball in the air for the maximum time possible ? It may seem so at the outset , but how can that help in improving one's skill . If one aims for keeping the ball in the air by any means possible and in the process just tries to hit it in any way he can , he tends to forget that the real purpose of juggling is to teach an individual in finding the sweet spot everytime he hits the ball . But if he tries to hit the ball as sweetly or as properly he can , each time the ball shall remain in the air and his touch shall improve as well .