More Like Treasure Hunting

“Life is unfair!”

We always hear it. Your eldest sister has a voice that can put a man who drank liters of coffee to sleep. Your bestfriend is the star-for-all-season actor in your school. Your cousin is a Palanca award recipient. Your neighbor travels around the world performing the Philippine folkdances with her co-Bayanihan Dancers.

You? You can do a lot of things too! Like take charge of your yearly induction party in school. You’re the collector of noisy fees. You sing at the bathroom. You naturally make people smile by the mere way you talk. You write on your journal every night… You write every night how you want to be like those people you know who have talents and you keep on asking why life is unfair for not giving you talents, and then you suddenly crack a joke [to make an excuse], that perhaps you were just sleeping when God showered talents to His people.

Life is not unfair. It’s just about being different.

There may be people who were born with talents because their parents are both best at a certain field. But listen! Even the in-born talents evaporate when they’re not being used. They tarnish, they rust. And eventually, they decay.

There are a lot of people who aren’t born talented but emerged as the world’s best because they break away from their fear to commit mistakes, to be laughing stocks, and to fail.

Because of these people’s unwavering determination to grow and know themselves better, they explore, they try, they go out of their comfort zone. They play with people better than they are, they face failure head on, they laugh at their own mistakes, and they keep on trying to hit their target no matter how many times they’ve missed it…knowing that what matters more is the number of hits rather than the misfire.

In the process of trying and trying, they don’t know that they’ve invested time and effort already to what they’re doing… until such time that their ‘play’ is now their ‘expertise’.

Through constant practice Lebron James developed a muscle intelligence that even in a commercial shoot where he needed to miss a shot, he had to close his eyes and take roughly 10 shots before he missed one. Babe Ruth has the most number of strike outs, but he also has the most number of homeruns. The Beatles started as low key 8-hour a day local band performer in Germany before they became an international hit.

Finding our gift of talents is much like a treasure hunting—you have to dig more holes before you find the exact spot of the treasure.

We have to keep on trying so we know where we perform best, or at least find the thing we enjoy most doing and invest time and effort in it.

It all just takes a determination to say YES—to keep on trying and exploring no matter what happens around you—and your willingness to INVEST time and effort.

Finding your gift is like any other journey: 1. you discover; 2. you develop; 3. you deliver.

When you discover, you dig a hole, fail, dig another hole, make mistake, and FIND.

When you develop, you invest time and effort knowing that the sweet fruit is just ahead. At this stage, your availability is more important than your ability. Just DANCE, DANCE, DANCE or COMPUTE, COMPUTE, COMPUTE.

When you have ‘played’ well regularly, you’ll be surprised of the BIG returns of your investment come you deliver. You’ll be in awe about how big your audience is, how many projects arrive, how many invitations to perform you have.

Remember, it’s never too late to hit upon our undiscovered talents and to put them to good use, especially if we use them to bless others and to glorify God.

God doesn’t wait for you to be perfect. He is a proud Father who cheers you as you perform with your best even if your notes jump once in while, or you left foot dominates the right, or you write two-line poem in five days.

When we don’t use our in-born talents, we lose them. If we don’t put them to good use, they peter out and don’t reach their full potential.

Trust that the BEST will happen everyday if we just believe. Even our miss out with the first hole is there to bring us closer to our own talents and failures are there to improve us.

Talents, when put to good use, are built to last… no matter what your age is when you finally find it.

Life isn’t unfair after all. Now we know everything depends on us—our faith, our determination, and our execution.

Stand up! Play! Have fun!