Your Strengths Come With Weaknesses

I see it all the time. People go to war against what they perceive as weaknesses in their personality, only to discover that they have shot and mortally wounded their strengths. Rather than merely tempering their weaknesses or guarding against some of the more potentially dangerous consequences of these weaknesses, they wish to root out the buggers tooth and nail. They then wake up surprised that they have lost their edge.

The sensitive poet seeks to steel his emotions only to discover that he can no longer see, hear, and feel, the words that use to flow from of his soul.

The utilitarian businessman seeks to become more altruistic and loses half his earnings, has to lay off loyal employees, as well as battling insurrection with his stockholders.

The scientist that never accepts dogma without question after question decides that she must be a bit more submissive toward conventional thinking…and begins falling prey to old stale thinking that leads to paths of ever increasing ignorance.

As I understand human nature, God has given us all certain talents and gifts that go a long way toward shaping our personalities and informing how we as individuals will move through life. The poet was made in such a way as to make music with words, the businessman intuitively knows what will and will not produce a profit, and the scientist was born asking “What if…?” Each gifting will then express itself in unique ways within the personalities of these individuals.

Your unique combination of talents and gifts come with certain personality traits that compliment them. Not being endowed with all possible talents and gifts, there are some personality traits that you are not inclined toward, just as there are some tasks that do not appeal to you, and some things that you will never desire to master.

This is not to say there is never any need to stretch yourself, only that, for you, your capacity for exercising certain traits will not be the same as your friend’s who is gifted and, subsequently, shaped in others ways.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2007

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The Road Less-Traveled

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else. - Woody Allen

For the longest time I was intrigued by and a bit jealous of those people that appeared to have their lives all mapped out. “In five years I will be here; in ten years, there; and, in fifteen years, at the top of the heap.” While their career path looked like a highway with signs that read, “In two miles you will be turning onto the Yellow Brick Rd.,” mine has been more like a snaking pathway through a dense forest enveloped in foggy mists that swallow you up and never spit you out.

“How in the heck did I get here?”

“Maybe I should have gone there.”

“This is not even a pathway … is it?“

“Whisky-Tango-Foxtrot!”

“I took the one less traveled by, and that made all the difference,” (Frost) sounds so romantic and adventurous when you are twenty, but after a decade or two you begin wondering if the reason your road is less traveled is because no sane person would ever freely choose to walk this way.

Fact is, however, even those people zooming down a well-lit highway are often wondering if they are wandering.

“Do I really want to go here?”

“What difference is it really going to make if I don’t go there?”

“This is a fairly wide road … maybe I am headed toward destruction?”

My guess is that when most people evaluate their journeys they wrestle with would’a-could’a-should’a, imposter syndrome, and other such second-guessing brought on by self-doubt. After all, not being gods, none of us are omniscient. This is why our journeys—the quests we engage in—are acts of faith, not certainty.

I have come to believe that, at the end of the day, what matters most is not so much what path we chose, but who we are becoming while we traverse our chosen paths.

Are we giving ourselves to what matters most? (And what, he asks, “Matters most”? Why faith, hope and love, of course!)

Are we constantly educating ourselves in great ideas and values?

Are we caring for our bodies and souls?

Are we seeking after the God who is Love, Light and Life?

So, whether you are zooming down an interstate or crawling along a path through underbrush, don’t become so focused on the destinations for which you aspire that you lose sight of the one that is taking the journey… for what does it profit a man or woman who arrives at the Yellow Brick Rd with a shriveled up soul?

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2009