What Can I Do ? (Part 1/2) #29
Imagine you are a fruit-bearing tree, and you see people around you starving. It hurts you, and you desperately want to help these people by providing them with food, but you feel helpless. Yet, the fact that you are a fruit-bearing tree allows you to produce fruit, and humans can eat fruit. In other words, you have the ability to solve the problem of these people, but you don’t do it, not because of a lack of compassion, but because of ignorance of the fact that you actually have the ability to assist them.
I specifically used the example of a fruit-bearing tree because it will teach us a lot of lessons here. But before we get into that, let’s see why we’re talking about it here. In the previous stories, we talked about who we are and why we are here on earth. For example, in one of the answers we gave about Who Am I, we said that we are the solution to a problem on earth. Okay, let’s think about that together. We may have the desire to do something, but as we have repeated many times in this blog, willing alone is not enough. We need to be able to solve the problem. In this story, we will focus more on the abilities we have that allow us not only to want to help, but to be able to help.
We began this story with an illustration of a tree that was moved with compassion when it saw many hungry humans, while ignoring that it can produce fruit that these people can eat, and their problem will be solved. Unfortunately, it is the same for many of us: we are not aware of the capacities we have to change the world. If you read the stories of several Brazilian footballers, you will realize that many of them come from rural areas, which are commonly known there as favelas. So, their families were not wealthy, and that always affects us in one way or another. But one day, while playing soccer, they realized that they have this gift. So, they decided to use their gift as footballers to become professionals and earn enough money to get their families out of the situations they were in.
If you analyze your life carefully, you will realize that there is something you were born with, something that can help you meet that personal or humanitarian need that is stalking you. That something we are talking about is innate: you have done nothing to deserve it — you were born with it, that is why you see that you are so good at it, even without having studied it in school. So you realize that, even if you go to school, it is not to learn, but to improve this gift.
Last year I watched a documentary about Zinedine Zidane, explaining his transition from being a soccer player to being a coach. Since all coaches have to go through a school where they study this profession in order to obtain a license to practice, Zizou went through this school bench as well. In the documentary, one of his teachers talked about what it was like to teach Zidane soccer. He said that there are things that he sometimes hesitated to say because he assumed Zidane already knew them. However, he said something I remember: Zidane was learning humbly, like any other student. He was aware that, even if for him, soccer is a gift, it’s innate, it doesn’t stop him from learning to improve. Note that I use the word improving the gift, not getting the gift, because as has been said before, a gift is innate.
You may look around you and see everything that’s going on and want to change things, but you’re wondering what I can do to change things? You may feel helpless, but rest assured, you are not helpless. Through this story and the next one, you will see how exercising your gift is what you can do to solve the problem you are called to solve here on earth. That is why we talk about it in this story. In the following lines, we will take some time to understand what a gift is and how to identify it. This will also give you a better understanding of who you are, which will in some ways add to the answers given to the “Who am I” question.
Many of us today know that there are people who have gifts of music, cooking, teaching, etc., but we are not always able to do so. But where some of us are mistaken is when we believe that only some people have gifts, and not others. A bit like if there are people who were lucky enough to be born with a gift, and others not. Rest assured, this is not the case at all. Our Creator is just (1), so He treats us all equally. Therefore, knowing the impact of a gift in the life of a human being, He has endowed us all with at least one gift. It’s just that some gifts are easier to detect than others. The most complicated part now is how to identify your gift. I won’t go into too much detail (because that will be the subject of another article), but I would like to give you the basics, allowing you to identify your gift or gifts, if you have more than one. Let’s start by defining what a gift is.
(1) He is the rock; his works are perfect, for all his ways are righteous; he is a God who is faithful and without iniquity; he is just and upright.
What is a gift and how do I identify mine?
In order to answer this question, we can draw inspiration from the definitions I have heard from two great people, whom I respect a lot: Steve Harvey and Myles Munroe. According to Steve, your gift is what you do better than others, with the least amount of effort. In other words, he tells us that, to identify our gift, we can identify the things we are naturally good at. For example, Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple with Steve Jobs) created Apple’s first computer without studying it in a school, or even reading how to do it in a book. By the way, for him it was just fun. Likewise, soccer scouts when they go to watch games to spot talents, they look more at players who are already doing well, even before they enter a soccer school. If you have something that you do well enough to amaze others even though you haven’t studied it anywhere, it could be your gift, or one of your gifts.
According to the Dr. Myles, a gift is an innate ability to help us perform a function with the goal of meeting a need in creation (or in the world). He explains each term in this definition by saying that, this ability is innate, because we are born with it. Then, it is intended to help us accomplish a function or a mission, in order to satisfy a need in the world. For example, the tree we talked about at the very beginning of the story was created with the ability to produce fruit, and that fruit satisfies the need for food for humans and animals. In other words, if you realize that others often come to you with a certain type of problem in order for you to solve it for them, they have surely seen a gift in you that you do not yet see yourself.
Similarly, if people often compliment you on a certain quality (you sing well, dance well, cook well, draw well, are funny, etc.), this may be another indicator of what your gift (or gifts) can be.
The different kinds of gifts
In the story Who Am I, we explained that man is a spirit that has a soul and lives in a body. We all know that we all have these 3 parts, but we are not totally equal on those 3 parts: There are people who are physically stronger than others (like sportsmen and women), others who have higher intellectual quotients (like Albert Einstein) and others who are stronger in spiritual things. This observation allows us to understand that there are different kinds of gifts on earth. By the way, there are 3 different kinds of gifts: physical, mental and spiritual.
In the Bible we are told the story of a man named Samson. He was born with physical strength. Remember, we explained that a gift is an ability that you are born with. As he grew up, he looked at how his people (Israel) were being mistreated by the Philistines and wondered, What can I do? It was the day he discovered his gift, that he knew what he could do to solve his people’s problem. Like many top athletes we admire and who perform feats with their bodies, Samson’s gift was also a physical one (2).
(2) And Samson said: With one donkey’s jaw, one heap, two heaps; With one donkey’s jaw I killed a thousand men.
Yesterday I was looking at the WhatsApp status of a friend, and he posted the different people who have had Nobels awards this year, thanks to their discoveries in the scientific field. These are the people who find new ways to treat diseases, who discover physical and mathematical laws, who give us a better understanding of human psychology, and so on. People who discover things like how men and women think, how different animals think according to their species, how to send a rocket into space, how to develop a psychology of success, etc. are people who have mental gifts, because these things require a lot of thought, logic, and imagination.
Now, you surely know people who excels more in areas such as miracles, prophecies, visions, and so on. These people seem to have a stronger connection with the spiritual world, which allows them to easily see things that you may find hard to notice at first glance. Or you’re that person who sees spiritual things easily. This is an indicator that your gift is spiritual.
We have different gifts on earth, because one person cannot do everything (only God is omnipotent or can do everything). This is even why God says that it is not good for man to be alone (3). We need help, the gifts of others as well as others need our gifts to succeed on this earth.
(3) The LORD God said, It is not good for this man to be alone; I will make him a helper like him.
If you know someone who might be helped by this story, please feel free to share it with them. You can also follow my account to not miss my next stories on the subject.
May the Grace of God help us obey His Law.
Thank you for reading me :-)
Resources
(1) Deuteronomy 32 : 4
(2) Judges 15 : 16
(3) Genesis 2:18
