My boy recently asked me a question that jolted me and made me think for the longest time without reaching any conclusions.
‘Erm, mum, what is your talent?’ he asked. ‘What’s my talent? Hmm… that’s a really good question.’ was my answer. I took the entire afternoon to think about it but could not give him any better answer than that.
Google says talent is defined as a natural ability of one to perform a task very well without the need for training or much effort. Based on this definition, I don’t think I grew up with any talent at all.
I love doing a lot of things. For one, I love spending time in the kitchen cooking, baking and whipping up new and interesting recipes. I dare say I am a decent cook, but I am not a fantastic chef who can creatively think up new dishes or plate up dishes to impress. I am not a supertaster too. My dishes are household materials that are served to fill up the stomach during meal times every day. I am contented when the two boys at home finish up the whole plate of what I have served to them.
I love being outdoor activities, especially cycling, swimming, badminton, and recently, jogging. But I am not a good or fast swimmer and I have no idea how to do freestyle in the water although I can float quite well. I can’t jog fast and am resigned to feeling high and getting a sense of achievement when I jog nonstop and at a speed faster than 8 minutes per kilometres. I don’t cycle fast too, not when I cycle along the PCN tracks and have to swerve and swear at disoriented pedestrians.
I love drawing and sketching for leisure. The boy says that’s my talent, but I draw and sketch mostly by copying pictures or following templates, rather than draw from my imagination or produce sketches that are jaw dropping. I am definitely not an artist. I don’t piss people off like some of them do.
I love music and I love singing. I tried learning the piano but I have no talent in doing so. My fingers are so short and inflexible, it takes me thrice the effort to even play a simple piece flawlessly. I used to be able to sing better when I was still in choir (thirty years ago) but I prefer to imitate pop singers because I get the kick when I can imitate them well. I have a voice of my own I think, but I use that mainly to nag and scold the boy when I have to. He hates it when I sing.
I love photography. Taking snapshots of the beauty in everyday life is like keeping visual memories of moments in our life. I think I am more inclined towards knowing and understanding compositions and perspectives, and that helps me take better photos. I can filter out specific components and figure out how those could make nice photos, but I am far from being a professional photographer. I need to have more time, more patience and perhaps better equipment to become one.
I love to organise things and keep things tidy wherever I go. In other words, I hate living in mad chaos because that makes me dysfunctional. That need to organise things happens not just at home, but also at work, in my laptop, my emails, the way I make decisions and the sequence of things that I plan out for the day. My emails are organised in clear folders and there’re no random files on the desktop unless it’s a file that is meant to be kept there as a reminder of what needs to be done soon. This allows me to prioritise tasks accordingly and keeps me motivated to do more. But is this a talent? Or an obsessive-compulsive behaviour?
At work, our HR has a list of identified talents. I asked the big boss in the company before, ‘So, what does it mean to be a hidden talent? What does it take to be one?’ I didn’t receive any answer because, clearly, it is confidential information. But what it does show is that people with talents are doubly appreciated and ranked more favourably. They are constantly being kept in the radar so that opportunities that come along can immediately go to them. I am obviously not part of that list as well, hence the slower career progression at work.
So what now? I don’t really think I have any talents and I probably grew up without one. So what if I don’t have a talent? Is it because I have not discovered what I am good at? And if not, does it really matter?
Is it a blessing in disguise not to have a talent because then, I don’t get fixated on just one thing and I can get myself to try out more, and many different things in life? Maybe, just maybe, talented people are usually weird in some ways and so because I don’t have any talents, so I am considered to be normal and humble? Maybe it’s a blessing not to be talented so that I don’t become stressed and pressured to keep performing beyond benchmarks?
Maybe. But sometimes, maybe it’s nice to have at least one talent that I can proudly call my own. I shall circle back to this question again, someday.
Happy 45th birthday to myself nevertheless.
