Its just natural

My youngest brother gave me a book recently called Strengthsfinder 2.0 and the premise of this nonfiction tome is that most of us have learned what our weaknesses or limitations are but we don't always know what our strengths are. It questions how our lives and world might change if we, instead of trying to make up for what we don't have, instead, start to play towards our already present inborn talents. It offers an online testing component to help determine what top 5, of the more than 30 listed talents, we might possess.

As I was looking at the image shown here of a swallowtail butterfly, it donned on me how these talents come into play while I am practicing my art. The ability to strategize is one of the talents I purportedly possess. It's less about cat-and-moussing than you might think and more about understanding relationships between things and how they interact. Some component of it is being patient enough to know that a butterfly will eventually land on a stand of flowers it is obviously attracted to and then being prepared (with a camera) for it to happen. Another talent that comes into play is my abiding sense that things share a connectedness. That there aren't any accidents, that an artist waiting patiently will actually find a a swallowtail butterfly when one is needed.

I have always had a sense that these and other talents were at work in my creative endeavors but it had never been spelled out so plainly for me before. Does it change my world to know these things? Yes. In short, it clarifies for me what had been a sort of nebulous feeling that creating art feels right or natural somehow, but not knowing why. And, in a connected kind of way, I am drawn to these activities the same way a butterfly is drawn to flowers, because it's a natural activity for us.

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