At age fifteen I compiled a list of everything I wished I could be: a world-class ice skater/skier/tennis player, amazing ballerina, professional-quality singer/harpist/cellist/pianist and speaker of multiple languages. My list of all the talents I wanted was very, very long.
In reality I could do none of these things even vaguely well. I struggled hard to define my talents and figure out what they might be. I tried many sports and dancing and was somewhere between horrible and mediocre at all of them. Languages enchanted me, but found myself stumped somewhere around the second year. I was also painfully shy when it came to actually speaking them out loud. Not too promising.
When I got my Patriarchal Blessing I was excited to find out what talents I might have. Both of my parents’ blessings had detailed accounts of things they were good at and what gifts would strengthen their lives. But my blessing said nothing about talents. No gifts were mentioned, spiritual or otherwise.
What’s a girl to do when she’s not talented?
Every solo that someone else sang in church, every piano recital given by somebody not me, every ribbon and award hanging on another person’s bulletin board filled me with envy and blackness.
It just wasn’t fair that I got such a crappy deal.
One year early in my twenties I sat with some friends watching the Miss America pageant, the annual event produced to make sure I felt like a well-rounded loser. Still, I couldn’t resist watching. Especially when it came to the talent competition. “What if,” I joked out loud, “your talent is something like math or cooking? Would they let you do that onstage?”
Math? Cooking?
For the first time in my life it really hit me that there are all kinds of talents. More than just the kind that can receive gold medals and rhinestone tiaras. I had heard that sort of thing a million times; there are lots of different talents, blah, blah, blah. But it struck me with force watching that pageant.
How do I find my talents? I wondered. What if my talents were things like jousting or basketweaving? Things I’d never be good at because I’d probably never have the opportunity to try them.
But talents are magical things; when the time is right they will find you. I think there is some sort of God-given homing device that attracts people to the things they’d be good at. They may not be dazzling or even very interesting. We tend to think of “real” talents as things that win awards. If it’s not something fancy and stage-worthy it’s not good enough. What a silly, narrow definition of a talent!
I turns out I have a talent for chit-chat. I can strike up a conversation with just about anyone and make them feel at ease. Who would have thought that would be a talent? But it is and boy, does it come in handy (a lot handier than ice skating!) Fifteen-year-old me sure couldn’t chit-chat. I’m pretty sure that even if it had been listed in my Patriarchal Blessing I wouldn’t have appreciated it or even cared.
This is the other wonderful thing about talents: they aren’t supposed to be given to us like a shopping list. They are hidden inside of ourselves to discover at different parts of our lives. We won’t have discovered all of our talents by the time we are fifteen or thirty. Or even sixty. I think if we keep trying we can develop talents until we’re too old and senile to think straight.
Listen to your heart. It will tell you about your talents if you let it. You’re not allowed to say, “that’s not a talent!” Just about anything can be a talent: lifting people’s spirits, crafting hair clippies, organization, cheesemaking, gardening. The best way to find your talents is to try to find your talents. They don’t need to be impressive and they don’t need to be done perfectly.
Talents are the gifts given to us to enrich our lives and enrich the lives of others. It’s not about showing off or getting compliments. It is about being profitable servants and becoming more like our Heavenly parents one step at a time.
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