Here’s the thing. To become a top athlete/Classical Musician requires a literal lifetime of training. Unless you are an extreme outlier of latent prodigal talen

Here’s the thing. To become a top athlete/Classical Musician requires a literal lifetime of training. Unless you are an extreme outlier of latent prodigal talent, you must start as soon as humanly possible. And then throughout this training journey you will be subjected to multiple wash-out/filter tests. The mass of children get filtered out very quickly — genetic predisposition (aka Talent) is either there or it isn’t. Surviving this purge awards you with the words that will curse and haunt you forever: “You’re so talented!” By the time you hit pro, you have survived multiple of these events. It is now your identity, your ego. And now in the open waters of competition, it just boils down to “train harder” and “do better”. Maybe next year is the year you finally breakout. What’s to stop you and why stop now? You don’t understand what it means to give up. Giving up is how all the others got washed out years ago. You didn’t wash out. You got the scholarships, the state championships, the mentions in local media. You deserve to be there and Glory is just within reach… Besides. “You’re so talented!” By the time you finally hit The Wall and the results show that there is a much bigger fish out in this pond, it’s too late. What are you supposed to do now? You skipped all regular education to get here. You sacrificed your whole life! Your parents paid a fortune. Besides. It will be a massive waste of “talent.” And so it goes. Maybe you can swallow enough ego to become a high school tennis coach. Maybe you will be able to be the one who picks the next Federer or Williams. Then you will vicariously finally get your glory and honor and fame. Because you were talented. It’s what you deserved. And you will spend your whole life chasing it.