Are two different things.

Potential is only valuable if we produce something.

Faithfulness may well be the best hope we have.  Faithfulness looks on our talents and abilities, our resources and our dreams, for ways of putting them to work.  At the same time faithfulness is aware of our relationship with others and with the world, noticing the needs around us.

It’s about being faithful to who we are, not who we are not.

When we are, our imaginations get to work, possibilities for creativeness come into play.  As we we’re faithful in these ways on a daily basis, we develop perseverance, the ability to keep going in the direction we know we must go, producing the things we know our lives can.

We need to stick to it because the first set of possibilities we produce are interesting but maybe not great, the next ones are better, but by the third set of possibilities we’re beginning to produce what world needs.

Perseverance takes faithfulness further, stretches language and use of metaphor and analogy – how Humans imagine more, new words or unusual ways of using words and images open doors to more possibilities.

The small steps of faithfulness adds up: keep going.

This morning I came upon the words which first identified my problem with potential and productivity.  I was forty five when I first read them: ‘If you’re forty-five and someone looks at you and says, “You have so much potential,” pause, excuse yourself, step into a closet, and have a good cry.’

In an earlier post, I shared how the person who wrote these words also opened up a way for me to start producing things – there’s always hope (I mean this).  I realised how I’d held back on what my life could be about, deferring to what others thought and wanted – akin to letting the clueless lead the clueless.

That was almost ten years and lots of small steps ago.  I’m keeping going.