Tag / gifts

by Nathan Coumbe

Play your music

“Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.”

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, Former U.S. Supreme Court justice

The other day I wrote a blog post about exploring the things about which you seem to be innately curious. I was discussing this subject the day before I wrote it, and during the conversation, I had something of a heartbreaking thought: I believe each of us has a unique purpose, a unique interest that, if nurtured, will allow that purpose to be lived out. And yet it seems as though a great majority of the human race never achieves their purpose.

Why is this so? Is the curiosity squashed out of them before they have a chance to develop it into something meaningful and lucrative, simply because it is different from what others think is a viable vocation or career? Is it that many are so focused on simply eking out a living that they never raise their heads long enough to look their purpose in the eye and pursue it? Are they so caught up in fantasy worlds, technology, and social media that time that could otherwise be spent on pursuing these inclinations is wasted? Or worse still, is the opportunity to live a purpose-filled life literally taken away by violence, famine, or disease?

Perhaps it is all of these reasons and more, but while you still breathe, while you still have time on this earth, I encourage you to listen to Mr. Holmes and play your music. Listen to Ralph Waldo Emerson and follow the beat of your own drummer.

Your curiosity, your natural affinities towards certain skills, subjects, passions, and interests – they were all given to you for a purpose. Follow them where they lead, ignore the naysayers, shun the nonbelievers.

Start today. Do something you feel you were meant to do.

by Nathan Coumbe

How to learn anything

Do it.

The thing you want to learn how to do? Start doing it.

Start writing. Start playing the drums. Start drawing. Start reading the classics. Start creating a podcast.

How do you learn how to speak another language? Any teacher worth her salt will tell you that you have to immerse yourself in the language and start speaking it. All the books and college courses in the world won’t help you if you don’t do it.

This is scary, isn’t it? The resistance in your head is telling you that you don’t know where to start or that you can’t possibly learn how to do this or that without a rigorous amount of study. If you don’t know where to start, then yes – go and pick up a book. Watch a YouTube video or download an app. Hire a teacher. But all the reading about it, watching videos about it, being lectured to about it – that won’t get you anywhere until you take action. Once you have a grip on the basics, you just have to start doing.

Learning is easy once you start doing it. Taking action is what’s difficult.

by Nathan Coumbe

Don’t bury the gift

My inspirational reading this morning as well as the podcast to which I was listening on the way to the gym both spoke about gifts and talents. All of us have at least one; mine happens to be music. I started taking violin lessons when I was 7 years old and caught on very quickly. Throughout my entire musical career, things related to music came naturally to me, whether it was music theory, the history of music, or picking up new instruments and quickly learning how to play them.

Then I auditioned for college – it was in that audition that I realized natural talent would only carry me so far. As a child and young adult, I rarely practiced – it all came so easily to me, I didn’t feel like I needed to do so. Halfway through my college education, I realized how much I really did have to learn and talent wouldn’t carry me any farther without disciplined, dedicated practice and lots of sacrifice.

I quit.

I suppose it was fear – something which came so easily to me was suddenly difficult, it was work, it took time to develop.

I buried my gift.

For a couple of years, music was absent from my life – I neither played nor listened to music. I shut it off.

Nurture yours

After a lot of reading, listening, thinking, and rewiring, I realized that I had been gifted with an affinity for music and had to nurture it in some way. I was no better than anyone else, and certainly much worse than others, it was something that simply came naturally to me and needed to be developed (imagine how much further along I would have been had I taken the raw talent when younger and practiced). But I finished my music degree and brought music back into my life.

You have a gift.

There is at least one thing that comes easily to you. Some people may tell you that it isn’t a talent or a gift, but I say it is. Perhaps it isn’t an obvious one, or a gift over which others ooooh and aaaahhhh. Maybe you speak very well, or understand electrical systems, or the inner workings of cars, or have a deft hand at puppetry! It doesn’t matter – if you have an natural inclination towards something, develop it.

Do something with it. Get better. It may not bring you money or riches, but nurture it anyway. Practice the one thing (or more than one thing) at which you were uniquely gifted, however seemingly big or small the talent.

Get better at it. Develop your gift, and when it gets difficult, keep going.

Don’t quit.