Gifted

Since Thanksgiving just passed I thought the subject of being gifted was appropriate. It is human nature to want to be important. Being significant is defined differently by each person but the need is always there after the basic needs are fulfilled (air, water, food, shelter etc).

As hard as it is to believe life does have a way of beating me down to thinking I am merely normal and like everyone else. After trudging through life I start to think that merely average. It is what happens when I live in my head for too long and think that the world is, as I perceive it. Then something happens that reminds me that I am special, gifted and blessed. The first time I was reminded this year was by a random front line worker that I was helping in a factory. She came to me with a mathematical question and I worked the question out loud for her. She did not respond to my multiple inquires if my logic was correct, during the tutorial. After we had completed the math problem she said that she had no idea how I could do that math so quickly and was amazed. I tend to take silence as acceptance and move on. It is one of my weakness that I have identified and continue working on improving. The improvement is very noticeable but not complete because there are still times when I forget to slow down for the people around me.

Even though many would consider me beyond confidant to the level of cocky, I like to believe that I treat most people as equals. I also have a deep respect for those who have abilities that I do not (music, art etc). In my head part of respect is treating people like they are my equals until they prove otherwise. Unfortunately this leaves a lot of people behind in discussions.

The second reinforcement of my abilities this year was when lunch buddy of mine noted that I was like “Quocapedia”. Every time he would go look up a reference that I had made during lunch to some fact, he would find my statement was validated. So he actually started believing me. The same lunch buddy likes to talk and would later in the year he made a statement that I disagree with every one of his positions. In retrospect I should have said: “I do not!” That would have been funny. I actually recall one instance that he swayed my opinion. It was something I never even knew existed before the discussion so does that really count?

The most important reminder of how blessed I am would be when I hear about two people much less fortunate than I. The first is a person that I have met who takes 40 medications and gets her blood treated on a weekly basis. That is someone that is deathly ill and not that old. The second person was run over by a drunken kid in a truck. The 24 year old victim had his face shattered, body disfigured, limbs crippled and in extreme pain. He has no job skills and no spouse. I will be very difficult for him to get that education that he did not value before the attack, because he is constantly in pain or on pain medication. His options for unskilled labor are very limited since he is crippled. Despite the laws about discrimination against people with disabilities, in the real world it still happens. This is especially true if the person is severely disfigured.

I am grateful that I can eat as much as I want, do not live in fear, I can stay warm. I am blessed to be very intelligent, healthy and have a family that loves me.