“Find your hidden talents, your hidden potentials, your hidden purposes and convert them… for the benefit of the world.” Isrealmore Ayivor

I have a friend with a whacky hidden talent: She can jump into any song that might be playing on the radio, from any era, at any point in the song, pick up on where the lyrics are, and sing along.

And not miss a word. Not. One. Word.

If she’s heard the song once, she knows it. Remembers every word.

She thinks that’s normal.

“Doesn’t everybody…?” she responds to my observation of her ability

No, it’s a gift, and one that makes me smile.

I have another friend who has travelled the globe, quite literally, from top to bottom and sideways, too. From Africa to Manchu Pichu. From the Artic to Antarctica, and countless countries in between.

She thinks everybody enjoys exploring like that, but I think it’s just one of her gifts, that desire to experience the far-away firsthand.

“Doesn’t everyone want to go to Africa? Or the Antarctic?”

Not necessarily. Personally, I’m okay with National Geographic close-ups of lions and pictures of penguins, you know?

One of my unremarkable talents—or at least, unremarkable to me—is that I seem to be able to organize things well.

Whether clutter, closets, or computer files, I can rearrange stuff and make it work better together; many a friend has requested my help with combing through their crap.

I mean, it’s not like a talent or anything—can’t everybody organize stuff?

Well, apparently not. Just ask Marie Kondo.

A gentleman I worked with can craft wood pens, beautiful works of art, each of them.

One gal I know can almost call forth animals while out walking in the woods; deer, possum, rabbit—they just appear!

Another can examine an almost bare pantry and still manage to cook up a delicious meal.

That, to me, is a talent.

We all have hidden talents we might take for granted, ways of seeing, or interacting with, or deriving value from the world around us, ways that totally escape others.

It’s sad… when we’re so practiced in acknowledging our shortcomings, that we don’t give ourselves as much credit for those gifts—the ones we consider small or insignificant—as the ones we earn and learn and strive for.

Sometimes, the degrees don’t matter as much as these smaller hidden talents.

And I think it’s these ‘insignificant” ones that turn out to be what others hold most dear about us and remember most fondly.

And make us smile—a not insignificant benefit to the world.