To Love or Not to Love

Author's note: This is a more personal and reflective essay detailing my journey through talent versus passion, specifically in the arts, exploring the tensions that come with being skilled at something you do not fully love and the guilt that can accompany stepping away. I hope that in sharing my experience, it offers some clarity or comfort to anyone wrestling with similar dilemmas.

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When I was around eight years old, my parents began cultivating a creative environment for my brother and me. They signed us up for music lessons, calligraphy classes, drawing courses, and group art workshops. I remember sitting in front of our old Windows laptop, watching step-by-step YouTube tutorials on how to draw specific things. I would pause, rewind, mimic the strokes, and try again.

That is the earliest moment I can consciously recall feeling drawn to art.

In hindsight, I was almost always labeled as “the art person.” In third grade, my teacher wrote a farewell poem for our class and described me as one of the “brilliant artists.” Art quickly became part of how others perceived me, and subsequently, how I perceived myself.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where my inclination towards the arts began, but beyond the act of making, I have always been an artsy person in sensibility - and I still am. I notice colour palettes and compositions; my appreciation for aesthetics extends far beyond just the canvas. Even now, regardless of the path I choose, that instinct toward beauty remains.

Throughout middle school and high school, I worked primarily in oil and acrylic painting. Studio art is not a casual hobby when pursued seriously. It eats up your afternoons and late nights, and I dedicated most of my high school years to it. 

But I knew I was good at it; I knew I was talented in the arts, or at least, possessed a high level of technical skill in painting. This was also affirmed by the people around me: teachers, friends, and family. There was a quiet consensus around my “talent.” It felt almost irresponsible not to consider turning it into something bigger. However, much of the art I produced became tied to school assignments and portfolio requirements. 

As most people experience, my journey of academic uncertainty was, and to some extent still is, extremely confusing to navigate. When approached with this confusion and lack of direction, a typical response would be: what are you passionate about? What do you see yourself doing? 

For a long time, I conflated talent with purpose. Talent, as I experienced it, is ability. It is proficiency that feels natural, efficient, sometimes even effortless. However, passion is something entirely different. I understand passion as a voluntary desire; it is not simply enjoyment, but what you choose to return to even when there is no reward attached. It is something that you always find yourself wanting to do, just for the sake of doing it. Passion, on the other hand, is the drive to always express and create; it is the need to explore an idea visually because words are insufficient. Passion does not require self-persuasion, and most importantly, it should not feel forced. And this is where my internal conflict began. When I reread the journal entry where I wrote, “If I don’t force myself to do art, I know that I will keep delaying it,” I felt something click into place. Passion, at least the kind that can sustain a career, does not usually require force. Discipline? Yes. Structure? Yes. But not force. Force implies resistance, which will then gradually become resentment. 

Initially, I felt guilt-ridden; the line between wasted potential and quiet redirection muddled into one. I was so hard on myself because the one thing I had always been told I was good at was the very thing I realised I’ve never truly felt drawn towards, or at least not enough to invest enough time to make a career out of. It felt irresponsible to step away from it, almost like betraying a version of myself that others believed in. 

I’m not great at storytelling, but I want to be better. I’m not the most eloquent, but I want to be better. There are so many things I want to improve at, and yet the one ability I feel most confident in, traditional art, is the one I can’t seem to find passion for. That contradiction confused me for a long time. Why is my passion in something I’m not naturally good at?

Last summer, I worked tirelessly on my portfolio. I revised old works and created new ones. I reached out to NYU’s art department to inquire about advice and expectations. I structured my schedule around the courses I would need. I prepared myself mentally as though the decision had already been made. As per their advice, I aimed to increase diversity in my portfolio. To broaden my range, I enrolled in a printmaking class the following semester. Ironically, that class was when I ultimately made the decision to let go because it clarified something I had never fully acknowledged.

My professor possessed a kind of passion that was palpable. When he spoke about his work, there was fire in his eyes. He went on tangent after tangent about his works; he was everything I envisioned the character of an artist to be. And sitting there, listening, I realised I lacked that same fire. And so my understanding of passion, the voluntary desire to do something, something that you look forward to, something you're eager to show up for, something that shouldn’t feel forced, revealed itself to me in the form of its absence. I realized that ability and passion do not always live in the same place. So, where do we draw the line between giving ourselves the grace to breathe and being lazy? 

Though I may not know exactly which specific field I want to enter, I know that I want to work in an industry that involves creativity in some form. That much feels clear. What I have also come to understand is that passion does not develop in isolation. One’s environment does far more than we tend to acknowledge. This reminded me of something my mom once texted me: “还有就是现在你认识的人多了，你更需要选择哪些人可以成为朋友。不要轻易被影响。当然这是 part of growing up.” (Because you’re meeting more people now, it’s even more important to choose carefully who becomes your friend. Don’t be easily influenced. But of course, that’s part of growing up.) As I’ve met more people in college, especially those pursuing STEM, finance, or other traditionally “secure” paths, I’ve sometimes felt a subtle pressure to choose something more practical, more predictable. It is easy to internalize other people’s ambitions without realizing it. But I am learning that your environment must be chosen intentionally. It is valuable to learn from those who walk different paths, but it is equally important to cultivate spaces that affirm your own passions. Being around people who are energized by creativity matters. It reminds you of who you are. 

Talent is what you can do; Passion is what you cannot stop wanting to do.