Do We Have Talent?

Talent is natural aptitude or skill; people possessing such aptitude or skill (Concise Oxford Dictionary-Tenth Edition). Do you have one? If your answer is no, then I must help you to answer it.

Can you talk, walk, run, write, read, punch, kick, or do physical work such as farming, sewing, sawing, crafting, hunting, fishing, swimming, cycling,etc? If you answer the above question with one “yes” minimum; then you have a talent.

May be some of you are thinking that talents is such a difficult things to find in you. May be some of you are thinking that a talent is something that suppose to be big and great like a great voice from a professional singer or just like Chris John who has many talents in sports. Just go back to the first sentence of this article: “Talent is natural aptitude or skill”, nothing mentioned about greatness or very good skills.

Suddenly this talent thing came across in my head when I captured a moment of Audrey sitting on the floor and drawing like a pro, with her eyes steered to her draw and her hand scratching the paper using crayon. Does she have a drawing or painting talent? By seeing her draws, I can not tell you that they are good draws, they’re look more like abstracts, or a bundle of rope. They’re nothing special. She can draw a balloon quiet right; and she also can write the one number…hahaha. But what amazed me is she can identify and mentioned the colors exactly. That’s why I can not say that she has a talent of drawing and painting, but one thing for sure she has a talent for knowing the colors and a talent for making a balloon draw.

Here I’d like to share an article from our Church News which taken the story from Inspirasi Batin 2008 by Kanisius Publisher:

“Everybody is gifted with talent. May be we don’t have a degree or any other certification, but we are gifted with strong body to work, or gifted with sharp instinct in business, or the ability in trading . The problem comes when we trap to compare with somebody else’s talent, and we want to have somebody else’s talent. After that we are fall into jealousy and disgrace our own talent. This behavior will make us not capable to see all the gifts from God. By doing that we will not be happy all the time, because happiness is related with our willingness to use and develop our talent. A farmer is happy because he planted his land with the knowledge he has. A public bus driver always feel tired after all day work but he is happy because he believes that he has done the best for his family. Many people feel that they have only a little talent but they thank God for it by using it and developing it intensively. They often feel that they are surrounded by happiness, not like the others who have the talent but never thank God for what they have.Today God remind us to take the responsibility. Do we use talent gifted by God? If we always complaining for not having something or we don’t have good changing in our life, may be that is because we don’t thank God and do not use the talent from God well.”