Skills and Talents

I like Sunday afternoons because its at my disposal for personal use. Today, I honed my shooting skills in Basketball, maybe inching up one percent from zero in the three-point shoot-out efficiency scale. The aspirants were using the other basketball court so I had to do with the age-old Ferrari court and I met aspirant Geobert there, practicing his football kicks.

A conversation started amid the bouncing balls and I told him that I need to improve my skills in preparation for my practical training. You see, you have a little bit of everything so that you can be of some help to the boys in many ways. You don't have to master all skills, the basics would have can already win hearts. Then he pointed, and it is universal truth, that we always have some forte we can be proud about and some areas where the room of improvement is as big as a standard-size football dome.

Then I surprised both of us when I said that what is not your talent is your skill. We all have our talents, some are naturally good dancers who groove as if they don't have a bit of bone in their limbs, some are natural virtuoso's who are music incarnate, some are angels that seemed to have lost their way going to the choir their voices so sweet and melodious a single note is enough to rouse varied emotions and a bucketful of tears. Talents are natural, we all have them but not all of them. 

What is not your talent is your skill. It means you might be naturally good at it but you can always improve by practice and hard work. It also means that any skill can be learned also by practice and hard work, and all skills are essentially reachable by anyone who aspires. As the Milo advertisement goes, great things start from small beginnings, I could become a professional three point shooter. I wish.