More than the sum of all our parts – our values, passions, skills, and experiences – each of us has received a gift to pass on.  I’m still groping for where this comes from and the language to explain, but I see in so many people the possibility of bringing a gift into the world only they can bring.

Our lives appear to have the capacity to form these gifts, even while we are pursuing our curiosities, learnings, and practising into forming skills.  As linguist Susan Smith ‘explains that voice is the “ultimate site of intersection and negotiation between the body and language,”* so our gift, like a voice, forms where these curiosities, learnings and doings meet, between character and personality, but is different to them.

To be aware that such a gift exists in everyone is only a beginning.  We must grow up to it if we’re to give it to others: ‘the person labours to become sufficiently empowered to hold and to give the gift’.**

Mindfulness is about being present.   To be aware of what we normally miss.  We must become present to the gift.

Growing up to the gift will take us into unfamiliar or liminal spaces, beyond and between the familiar ones.  We’ll not only hone skills, bringing these together into talents and developing them into strengths, but we’ll also grow our characters, facing our failures and learning to embrace our past and our future.

If this sounds more like a mythical journey than your life, this is exactly it.  Myths are explorations of what it is to be be fully Human.

Daniel Kahneman^ warns, though, that in our way lie substitution and WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is).  We quickly find an answer, not realising that we have substituted an easier question for the more difficult original one, whilst our past experiences determine our anticipations of the future.

I hear it many times, the whisper of a hope for something more in life.  But it must come easy-ish and fit into an already overfull life: How can I be less rushed? is an easier question to face than, How can I become a person worthy of my gift?

(*Linguist Susan Smith, quoted in Charlotte Bosseaux’s Dubbing, Film and Performance.)
(**From Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)
(^See Danile Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.)