I wholeheartedly agree that gratitude is extraordinarily important.
A few more musings from my life experience: one of my siblings has a profound gift in a particular area, even notable in the context of being globally profoundly gifted. Another of my siblings has been hyperfocused on the profession which they currently practice since well before school age. I, on the other hand, always had many interests, with sufficiently diverse gifts that several of them quite reasonably could have been pursued into excellence. As a young adolescent, I found it challenging to find focus, especially when it seemed that most of my chronological peers and my siblings had such a clear idea of their paths. The meanderings through various post-secondary studies, however, allowed me to come to a better understanding of myself and the value of eclectic, curiosity-led learning, for me in particular.
One of the helpful perspectives that I received from my parents, which was especially helpful during that period, was that there are only so many hours in the day, and so many (unpredictable) years in one's life. These are constraints that we all live with regardless of giftings, and cannot truly defeat (or even stave off, without a very high cost). Which is why it is okay not to "achieve to one's potential" in every field--or even, to some extent, in any field. I was taught to be responsible with my talents, but also to recognize that no one can do everything. There will always (as indigo pointed out so eloquently above) be a road not taken, and that does not have to be a source of deep regret, even if one is occasionally a little wistful. Life, after all, is not a race to the finish; who we are becoming, and those we touch for the better during the journey, are what's important.
And fwiw, I was a far better technical musician years ago than I am now, but I enjoy generating music for its own sake, with all of my flaws, and derive pleasure from the process of itself, and any small improvements that I make (even if they never bring me back to my past peaks). And I think that my joy in the music adds to the pleasure for my occasional audiences.
