If a great musician plays great musics and no one hears...was he really great?

I recommend the following post on an interesting experiment. In, the world famous violinist Joshua Bell pretended to be a street musician. What do guess happened?

Nothing.

Josh received no more attention than any other street musician.

The article theorizes ad nauseumabout why this occurred. An interesting interpretation is given here, pointing out that no matter how much talent you have, working in certain contexts will support you. I think this idea is important and under utilized by high school guidance counselors, freshman advisers, and college career counselors. Students are typically told to pursue their dreams. This is stated with absolutely no context.

If your dream is to be a street musician, it doesn't matter how good your are or how much you practice, you won't succeed. But most people don't aspire to be a street musician, they aspire to have a contract with a major recording label. But what we forget is the performing arts is a winner-takes-all market.* Chances are, if you aspire to obtain a contract, you'll end up as a street musician. No matter how good you are.

The point is, that dreams and aspirations must be in context of what is feasible. We should encourage or children to aspire to a means of independence from a subset of feasible options. Because in the end, we all want independence doing something we love, not failure doing the thing we loved most. And do your best within this feasible subset.

Disclaimer: I don't mean to pick on musicians, but I was (am) one, so it becomes a convenient example.

Caveat I: The career trajectory for most people is nonlinear and career changes are frequent. We also need to prepare our children for this by helping them focus on a flexible set of skills rather than an over-attachment to a single, seemingly 'well defined' career.

Caveat II: Defining what a 'feasible subset' is can be very problematic. This is why career paths are nonlinear and change frequently. See caveat I.

*Blame written language for this. If you don't know why, maybe I'll explain it in a later post, though someone with more economic training than I would probably to a better job. In a nutshell, the easier it is to reproduce your work, the faster the (perceived) best-of-the-best capture (nearly) the entire market. For what you produce. With writing, you don't need a story teller for each village. With iTunes, you don't need a musician for each village.