Share your gift(s)

One of the most important quests we can embark on as we go through life, is the quest for Meaning with a capital M. Those of us who are lucky enough to find it, know it instantly, feeling it in every fiber of their being. But how should one go about discovering his or her core mission or calling, supposing such a thing exists?

Having come face to face with my own mortality a few months ago due to a sudden medical emergency that to my eternal gratitude, was able to be addressed just in time, has compelled me to wrestle, with an acute sense of urgency, with some of life’s universal questions.

Often derided as mere clichés due to their obvious relevance to anyone with an active pulse, such introspective interrogations are nonetheless important to engage in at least at some point in time, precisely because of their unavoidable nature. All of us will have to deal with them sooner or later, whether we like it or not.

The questions I’ve been grappling with most recently include: what is the meaning of life? Does my life have a purpose? If so, how do I find it, and if not, how could I, or anyone else for that matter, possibly cope with such overwhelming meaninglessness?

Although there are not (and never will be) definite answers to these existential musings, I was triggered by something I heard Dr. Jordan Peterson, the ubiquitous yet controversial Canadian psychologist, say when scrolling through some self-help videos the Youtube algorithm kindly offered me:

“The purpose of life is to find a mode of being that is so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant”

The question that hit me immediately afterwards was of course, if this be true, how am I to find a meaning to my existence that is so powerful that it erases everything else?

In his attempt to provide an answer, Peterson turns to the Bible, and more specifically to the symbolism behind the story of the burning bush in the Old Testament. In a nutshell, the story is that Moses, while walking along, encounters a burning bush that captures his attention. The more he approaches and pays attention to the bush and all that emanates from it, the more the voice of God manifests itself to him, ultimately setting him forth on his mission to free the Israelites from the iron grip of a tyrannical pharaoh.

Jordan Peterson delivering a lecture at the University of Toronto in 2017. Photo by Adam Jacobs (Wikimedia).

To translate this into everyday terms, I believe the lesson to be drawn from this story is that when something captures your attention and you are willing to engage with it fully, it leads you into the depths and perhaps, if you’re lucky, towards that which you find meaningful.

This prompted yet another question in me: of all the things that do or could capture my attention, how do I identify the one or the select few I should give priority to above everything else, considering that whether we like it or not, our time is indeed limited?

It was at this point in my thinking that my focus turned to the question of our innate gift(s), and more specifically to how and even whether we should cultivate them at all.

Indeed, if it’s true that our mission reveals itself after we pay attention to what animates us, it would stand to reason that whatever that ends up being, would presumably involve something we’d enjoy doing or take part in, and for which, in most cases at least, hopefully, we’d have some particular ability or gift.

Drawing on my personal experience in this regard, I’ve come to believe that whether we have the chance to develop our inner gifts and therefore find a purpose that is compelling to us, depends to a great extent on whether this is encouraged from a fairly young age.

For instance, during my school years, I placed far more emphasis on the need to correct my deficiencies in subjects I had less affinity with (in my case math) than I did exploring and improving further in the areas I was already naturally good at. This led me to a point where I denigrated my own abilities and revered those who excelled in the domains I did not.

Years ago, in one of the first truly viral Ted Talks, Sir Ken Robinson, an acclaimed author and expert in education, called for a revolution in the way children are assessed and taught in school. One of the essential points he made in a truly funny, self-deprecating way, is that, educators all too often follow a uniform standard of what constitutes success for a given student, and as a consequence, constrain their innate creativity and fail to see the gifts that define each one of them uniquely.

This by no means diminishes the importance for children to learn the value of grinding through a difficult challenge and stepping out of one’s comfort zone from time to time. It builds character and the level of resilience we all need to be able to draw from once faced with life’s inevitable turns. It does however draw our attention to not negate or own individuality and all the singular gifts that makes us who we are.

In a moving commencement address, Jim Carrey, the famous actor and comedian, recalled how his father abandoned his dream of becoming a jazz musician in order to raise a family, and so he ended up becoming an accountant instead. Eventually it wore him down, and he became increasingly bitter. Losing his job later at the age of 51, he felt broken: sacrificing his own ambitions was difficult enough, but ending up failing at something he knew was clearly not his calling, was utterly crushing.

Jim Carrey delivering a commencement address at the Maharishi University of Management in 2014.

Knowing first hand of the risk you can also fail at something you don’t want to do, fueled Jim Carrey’s commitment to ultimately pursue his calling and become a comedian. It’s fair to say that more than a few are grateful for him to have made that decision.

In the end, I believe cherishing and perhaps most importantly, sharing your gift(s) with others, is an incredible act of courage. Indeed, doing so necessarily implies putting yourself in the vulnerable and often risky position of letting others see you in all your glory and inadequacy, allowing yourself to be who the world needs you to be. Perhaps that is the highest mission of all.