Birds Singing in the Forest: Inspiration for 2019

Searching for inspiration to spark a New Year’s blog post I came across these words stitched on fabric: “Use all the talents God gave you for the forest would be very quiet if only the best bird sang.” Being a person who drags around a lot of guilt for wasting time and my minor league talents, those words struck a chord. I’m good at hiding my voice in the shower because it isn’t as good as someone else’s. I’m not talking about actual singing talent, of course. I left that aspiration back in high school before years of asthma and old age came into play. Now I have trouble singing anything that doesn’t hurt my ears and send the dog off to another room. I’m talking about what I perceive as my God given talents and how I take them for granted. And don’t we all? Please tell me I’m not the only one. So instead of New Year’s Resolutions I’m cataloging my talents and vowing to appreciate and use them more in 2019.

1) I’m good at organizing things whether it’s a basket full of nuts, screws and washers or a complicated family genealogy book or---back in the day---flowers for a country club wedding with 500 guests. I can see the big picture and making sense out of all the snippets that feed into it. So how do I plan to put this talent to work in 2019? I'm starting with a walk-in closet I can barely walk into anymore. It needs a major purging of things I’ve been holding onto because my weight bounces all over the place. I’m afraid to let go of things that are too big or too small and please tell me why I’m holding on to worn out things that fit! It’s not like I don’t have the money to buy new clothing. Ohmygod, I wanted to write some New Year’s Resolutions that didn’t include the classic weight related ones and the first thing I put down on my bullet point list took me right to that place!

2) Painting. I’ve struggled with low self-esteem issues for years when it comes to not having enough talent to be another John Singer Sargent, portrait artist extraordinaire. But I do have some talent. So maybe it’s time for me to join the realm of backup singers, so to speak, who approaches art for the shear fun of dabbling. Maybe it’s time to change the style I’ve been working towards since my teens and go for something that frees what talent I do have to go where it’s never been before…abstract, funky, sideways...anywhere but in an upward trajectory towards a discipline I’ll never achieve.

3) Handcrafts: knitting, quilting and sewing. I still knit and still enjoy it and I definitely have/had a talent for sewing. I took tailoring classes back in college and actually made men's lined suit jackets that looked every bit as good as any you’d find in high end stores. I was a great seamstress but I lost my interest in sewing somewhere in the '80s when free time was harder to come by and we played dress-up less and less often. In the past decade I tried to revive my once-love of sewing by taking a class on quilting but I was bored quilting using a sewing machine. I’ve since made a couple of quilts entirely by hand, which was akin to meditation that I loved doing, but I’m losing my finger dexterity so I’ve hesitated taking on another quilt project. For 2019 I hope to find a couple of handcraft projects that inspires me. And if I don’t I’ll know by the end of the year that it’s time to cut my losses and run from my past successes.

4) I have a talent for long range planning, if you want to call it a talent. Some would call it a boring way to live but it’s served me well and it’s a skill that I couldn’t shake if I wanted to, having been raised by depression era parents who both knew what it was like suffer hardships. With that in mind, I took the DNA health test from 23andMe and the results should be coming the first part of January. I read somewhere that only 10% of the population wants to know if they have the gene markers for the health conditions the test reveals including Alzheimer’s. But isn’t knowing just an extension of gathering facts for long range planning? I might regret the decision because once you look at the test results you can’t un-see them and they say it affects you in ways that you can’t predict. For me, I think if I have the marker for Alzheimer’s I’d either obsess with estate planning or want to cram as much fun stuff into my life as I could while I can still remember doing it, which begs the question why don’t I do that now without knowing my health future? I could get hit by bus tomorrow---well except for the fact that there isn’t any bus service here in the suburbs where I generally roam. But you get the point. 

“Use all the talents God gave you for the forest would be very quiet if only the best bird sang.” Henry Van Dyke, an American author, educator and friend of President Woodrow Wilson is credited for writing those words. And for 2019 I hope to use that sentiment to keep my voice strong doing the things I have some talent for doing...and that includes being one of the birds that sings in the Blog Forest. ©

This entry was published a day earlier than my usual schedule so I could wish you all a Happy New Year! See you again on Saturday.