The Last Card: King of Spades

A have a typical high school life. I am one (it means we are many) class clowns in our batch. I don't know if it was sheer liveliness or just a juice of our youth but we always crack jokes to make the class burst in laughter. But whenever there's a contest, like these class jesters are usually the one who gave the wild idea and creates marvelous concept. The person In applaud most is Leo Aquino and Lourdes Severo. They are people with jokes but definitely one of the most sensible people in our batch. I, on the other hand, belongs to the people who rarely attend classes just to play basketball. It is when my classroom adviser talk to me about what will happen if I continue this attitude, specially we are nearing our graduation. She told me: "I have handled you since your third year, and I have seen you in your lower years. It is evident you fail in the first three quarters but always get a score in the fourth good enough to save your whole annual term. You too have ideas that are so outrageous and seemingly radical that always brought out your kind of ingenuity. You are only hardworking in areas you love and seemingly ignore those that bores you. You have a great gift but you either hide it or misuse it. Think about it. You were never there whenever that gift of yours was needed. Don't make them useless. It will just fade and so your future. Think about it."

I did graduate high school and make sure that in my college days, I will use those gifts. And I do learn more to have other skills and enhance what are presently acquired. I have learned that TALENT IS USELESS IF YOU'RE ALWAYS ABSENT. Time is always at the essence. Talent, or skills, always go hand in hand with time. Using them is like sharpening a sword. And like swords, they can be full of rust when they are just hidden. Always be there. You can never know when your opportunity will rise. While waiting, why not sharpen your sword. You will never know what kind of object that your sword must strike.

The Generic Truth

People see me as a person who can do everything. Like what Michael Jordan say "My role is the utility man, I fill in the things where our team is lacking." Well I am a Michael Jordan fan and definitely we are two different people. He is born with his special talent. He was born to play basketball. I envy such guys. People with in-born talents. While me, I have to learn things, the hard way. If to be compared to a paper, I am just an ordinary sheet, not an A4, not even a manila paper, a formless paper. I also see people with unique talents that uses those gifts in a very bad manner. Like swindlers. Definitely they have a gift of persuasion but instead of being involved in marketing or media or any professional field to use it, they make money by fooling other people. Most of them will say they do that because they have nothing and nobody would like to hire them. They didn't even finish schooling. With the ability they have, they definitely have something. They just want something in an easy way. Like what I have said, I do not have any talents. But just what I have said in one of my blogs, what I do have are qualities. I'll explain it to you. Regardless the number of times that I fail (most people would say "maybe this thing is not meant for me.") I use my perseverance and patience, backed up with being industrious to be able to gain a skill, like basketball, writing, drawing and the like. I am not a social animal, I am actually an introvert being. But because I feel the need to live in my social environment, the urge to belong with everyone else, I use my quality to adjust in different scenarios and even with different people of different walks of life. Added with a wide understanding and relating abilities so that I will know what others may think and or may feel, then to what I personally feel about it, I tend to please anyone, and to be two or three steps ahead. With that, I have developed negotiating, humor, persuasion, marketing and public relation skills. It also helped me further develop my strategic planning and people skills. There are many things to be set as my personal examples but these things, these developments didn't transform overnight. Like everybody else, I also was rejected, revoked, and even humiliated by the huge number of mistakes that I have made during these learning processes. Yes, it is an ugly experience to be humiliated. But by quitting brings the humiliation to you as a person. Everybody can humiliate, but is up to the receiver to reject or accept it. It doesn't involve fist fight, all is involve is real decency, discipline and focus. Nobody can crush your humanity unless you let them do it. With these qualities, I learned and develop many different skills. So here, we can see the difference of talents and skills. Talents are the inborn special capability of a person, while a skill is a special capability being put into use. The most different things that is hard to develop are discipline, understanding and focus. These core values are a very strong foundation to a very fruitful human being. It is so easy to quit, but it is so hard live as a quitter. Remember, if you are at the lowest part of your life where you feel you cannot do anything, heed these words, "I am definitely wrong, I am still alive and I can do everything. I am down and beaten but there nowhere else to go but up. I have nothing to lose but everything to gain."

The most important part of being able to do everything, is the social responsibility of taking care of everyone else, and not stepping on anybody just to be a level higher. Pride is important, as well as humility. Never forget to say thank you. There are no enemies, some are just obstacles to further enrich and better yourself. It is not only about them, it is most definitely about you so don't put the blame on others. Anyways, we are all the same, that's the Generic Truth. We are all walking on the same earth and under the same sky.