I've long thought about starting a blog but have never gotten around to it. One reason is that I don't want to get caught in some blog software scheme that gradually costs more and more to run.
The other is finding suitable topics to make it a contuing activity.
But I've got to start somewhere so I've decided to have a test run here.
My next post will be my first blog on this site.
BLOG – 2025-03-19 – DOING WHAT YOU ARE GOOD AT
A couple of days ago I watched a “One Minute Jesuit” video on You-Tube entitled “Try What’s Easy”. The presenter was Fr. Michael Rossmann SJ.
He made the comment that many people spend a lot of time trying to improve their skills in those areas where they feel they are weak, instead of concentrating on gifts which they obviously have.
In short they waste their time doing things that they are not likely to do well, and do not achieve the things they could do if they concentrated on skills they can do well.
One reason is that if they know they can do something easily, they tend to think that it can’t be important and they need to work on their weak areas.
The irony is that God is the one who give us our talents, and it is those very talents which will give us the greatest return if we develop them.
Of course we may not like our strengths – someone with a gift of administration might think that dealing efficiently with adminis-trivia is a humiliating gift. What’s wrong with being an engineer or a doctor!!
Yet effective administration is needed in the doctor’s and engineer’s office or the wheels will fall off.
I fall into that category. I think administration is one of my gifts and I believe another one is writing. Outside of those two I find it difficult to think of anything else that I ‘find easy’. But I don’t much care for the gift of “administration” and I’m not one of those lucky people who “just have to write”. I need something to write for.
This doesn’t stop me from setting goals in a number of areas, most of which are not strengths. Of course they have some benefits . For example learning a couple of languages via U3A keeps my mind active, and trying to learn guitar is a real challenge as I am also hard of hearing. But I know full well that music is never going to be my main ministry.
This doesn’t mean that I have to drop these things altogether, but I do need to get my priorities right. I need to do is to spend more time doing those things I already do well and work on improving those talents God really has given me.
Ludwig Beethoven gradually went deaf as he grew older, and I can empathise with him as I have a hearing loss myself. But he had a knowledge of and gift for music so he was still able to compose even as his hearing worsened. Composing music for the piano was “easy for him”.
He admitted that he couldn’t do anything else, writing to the composer Ferdinand Ries: "Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on Earth."
Fanny Crosby wrote 8000 hymns and gospel pieces, with more than 100 million copies printed. Yet she was blind. She did what she was good at.
Therefore I need to take my talents into account and concentrate on them, rather than spreading myself all over the place trying to do things that are not my strengths.
How about you? What talents do you already have and are you using them?
