More about Asher's Talents

I once reproached Asher for taking things up and dropping them instead of pursuing them until he mastered them, which is what he was on the way to doing at last with cooking. He responded that he had gotten what he needed out of the things that he tried, and that was enough for him.
This leads me into a train of thought. Upon reading in today's paper that Bobby Fischer died, I realized there is a huge difference between talent and obsession. A person who is obsessed with an activity risks becoming unbalanced - his or her achievements in that field may be extraordinary, but they come at the expense of breadth of character, They are enslaved to what they do. Obsession is neither a guarantee of achievement nor a sine qua non for it. Talented people love what they do and engage in the activities they're good at because of that love, as an expression of that love. Asher's talents derived from enthusiasm, from love. If he didn't love what he was doing, he stopped doing it.
Last year a young man his age, who had wrestled with deep depression, hanged himself. Asher had been a close friend of his for a while when they were in high school. Then, for some reason, which he never told us, he became so angry with his former friend that he broke off all contact with him - very rare with Asher, who used to have furious fights with people and then make up and become even closer friends. Later, as Asher understood how deeply distressed his former friend was, he felt compassion for him, though they never became close friends again. The news of that young man's suicide was as shattering for his parents, his parents' friends (including my wife and me), and the whole circle of people who had known him as was the news of Asher's accidental death in Peru. Naturally that suicide aroused fear in me that Asher might do something like that as well. Who c0uld tell what kind of stress he might be facing and hiding from us? But of course, thinking back about who Asher was, I realize that he loved life too much to have killed himself intentionally.