What we can't un-know

Last winter, I was talking to someone who was interested in joining my Blazing Talents programme. I’ll call her Mabel. Mabel already had a pretty satisfying life in many ways. Her kids were grown and doing well, she had an enjoyable job in interior design, and she was busy with friends and hobbies.

“Part of me thinks that’s good enough,” she said.

Clearly that wasn’t the part who booked a call with an expert on talent blocks.

So I asked her a series of questions to elicit what else was going on.

Gradually I learned that Mabel had known she was an artist from a young age but had kept her ambition circumscribed in various ways over the years—for example, by not showing her work when she had the chance, by letting her design job entirely replace independent creative output, by telling herself that if she couldn’t be a full-time working artist she preferred opting out entirely.

In her answers, though, another version of Mabel—Artist Mabel—started to come into view. She had made appearances in the past but never been allowed to have a big claim on the future. She would be willing to squeeze art work around a day job and stay up way too late. What mattered to Artist Mabel was how it felt to spend 10 hours painting and not even notice the time had passed. But she didn’t just want painting as another hobby either. Artist Mabel wanted to believe she could still make something she viewed as ‘real work’. As we talked about this potential, Mabel said it was exciting to think about but pretty scary too.

“The thing is,” she said, “What if it’s just super disappointing? What if I find out I suck, that I was never good? Why not just let things be fine as they are?”

“Tell me this,” I responded. “Why did you book this conversation?”

“I guess it feels like I could be doing more,” she said. “Something is missing, something I feel like I could be doing with what’s inside me.”

“The feeling like you could be a contender,” I summarised.

She nodded.

“So here’s the thing,” I said. “You don’t ever have to act on that feeling. But it’s not going away. So the first question is not really whether you’ll be disappointed or not. It’s whether you want to live with this feeling for the rest of your life or not.”

I saw Mabel’s face change when I said, It’s not going away. She knew I was right about that could-have-been-a-contender feeling. I wasn’t giving her new information. I was pointing out a truth she already carried in her bones.

She didn’t look relieved, but she did look certain, like she finally felt solid ground. She could see the actual choice in front of her.

Nothing could force her to let Artist Mabel out. But nothing could force Artist Mabel to relinquish her claim on their limited time on this planet either. That other version would keep knocking on some internal door, demanding her freedom, until the end of both of their days.

That’s the thing about talent blocks. We may not unblock them—we may organise our lives to avoid thinking about them—but we don’t forget them. Once we have the conviction there’s something more in us, we can’t un-know it.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we don’t try to un-know it.

Some of us attempt to anesthetise our knowledge with booze or drugs or sex. Or sublimate it into relationship drama. Or curdle it into unrecognisable shapes via envy and bitterness.

Some of us even become generally well-adjusted adults, insisting that life is good just as it is—and anyway why take on some big, weird challenge just to maybe waste our energy and time?

But, chaotic mess or responsible adult, we are still and always will be the kind of person who knows they have the potential to be another, bigger kind of person.

In my case, I spent several years trying to hide from what I really wanted to do. I then spent about two decades in the struggle to do it without fighting myself every minute of the process. And since being more or less unblocked I’ve been through big disappointments—times when I gave the absolute best that was in me and found it just wasn’t enough to get me where I wanted to go yet.

I’ve also spent the last several years shepherding other people through parts of this same journey. So I feel I can say with some authority that all three of these experiences suck.

But I think the first one is the most dangerous, because it carries the most potential for self-deception. We try to tell ourselves the potential we perceive doesn’t really matter, that it’s too late, that the risks aren’t worth it, that we probably wouldn’t be that good at it anyway—and all along we know what we’re saying is bullshit.

We know we’re partially just hoping the knocking stops, even though we also have a gut feeling it won’t. We’re lying to ourselves and pretending that we’re not.

I’m not sure if everyone hears that knocking. But I’ve seen many people who do get stuck on the threshold with their hand on the doorknob for a long-ass time, sometimes for a lifetime. And I am certain that, even if we never manage to turn the handle, there’s no escaping our knowledge that the door was there to be opened. And that knowledge gets more painful as our chance to open the door shrinks.

As for Mabel, she went away to think about it, as a responsible well-adjusted person usually does. Then she got back in touch. She didn’t put it in the terms I’ve been using here, but her decision was clear. She decided the best way to deal with all that persistent knocking was to finally open the door.