An eye for an eye...is Talent

Don't get bemused by the title of this post! It has nothing to do with revenge and similar sentiments. It's all about the talent...

Let's take a small example:
We know of Dronacharya who taught various military arts to the royals of Hastinapur - Pandavas and Kauravas. He asked Yudhishthira and others, what they saw when asked to shoot a bird's eye. While others "saw" tree, forest, Dronacharya himself, bird et al, it was Arjuna, who reported seeing only the eye of the bird. Needless to say, he was the only one successful in his attempt of shooting the bird's eye and went on to become one of the greatest archers world ever saw!

There are two things that instantly come to my mind on recalling this story:
1) Arjuna was dedicated and focussed towards the goal...thereby striking the bird's eye correctly. He, thus, went on to become a great warrior as a result of this particular trait of his.
Lesson: We must focus on the right things - of course, the problem that may arise is to find out what is right! The answer lies in the second point below.

2) Arjuna had a natural talent to hit the targets - his eye was great at that. And moreover, he followed his guru's instructions to the hilt, thereby striking the eye of the bird. Rest of the royal disciples too had an eye -which wasn't too great at complementing the arrow - but must have possessed few other skills. It's because one cannot afford to lose the focus on the surroundings while concentrating on the target in a battleground.

All of us have a good eye for few targets and not-so-good eye for others! If we go by the analogy in the above story, Talent, in this case, is nothing but having an eye for the (bird's) eye; hence the title of this post.

All of us are talented in some way or the other and possess an expert-eye, what's needed is the bird's eye. How? The answer lies in the analogy itself - it's the responsibility of a mentor - teacher -or a leader to guide and nurture the talent in the right direction.

We can only imagine what Amitabh Bachchan would have had done, if he were a cricket player OR Sachin Tendulkar, had he been an actor. It's their talent -their respective birds' eye...Now it's your chance to find out your talent, your eye and polish it to the full to see what you ought to see!


P.S.: Publishing without proof read, please mark any mistakes in comments if you find any..

[Edited after a proof read on Oct 06, 2010. Made few corrections.]