If Only

If only we could be comfortable in the things we do well. If only we were confident and happy to know the things we do well are worthy in themselves. Like, if I could arrange flowers and the result was very wonderful, that would be the gift I carry. Or if I could aim a dart and hit the bullseye, that would be my thing. What if I could negotiate peace between difficult people, what if I could understand how money works, what if I could build efficient bridges with my engineering skills? My grandfather was a lucky wealthy man, a man who didn't really have to do very much. He was one of the Beautiful People before the second world war, but he could make a garden so beautiful and simple and lush, that it took your breath away. He knew where flowers would grow and how they would grow. He knew what would work and what wouldn't. My memories of Grandpa are of a rather hansdome confident man who's hands were large, strong and bent due to the accidents he had had while doing blacksmithing or falling off roofs while mending them and so on, and these hands could create without fail, gardens of breathtaking simple beauty. Not being very good at business and rather sauntering through life didn't bother him at all. As a little girl I thought my Grandfather was able to do magic.

What if life conspired to make the thing you do best easy for you to do. What if your talent was to understand how companies should be best run, or how curtains could revolutionise a room, and that was how you made your living and it was as simple as that.

Well, all the things we are not good at give us a balance I suppose. Life that was too easy and straight forward wouldn't give us much perspective on a wider scale. If it was too easy we may become curtain bores or best run company bores. And then if there was a sudden glut of companies running perfectly and rooms utterly splendid with curtains to die for, we would be lost.

What if we were happy with our individual gifts, then. What if we recognized them and liked them and admitted them. What if it didn't matter what anyone else thought of them, that the fact that we had them and liked them was enough. Goodness, what a thought.