Giving Our Gifts

Why is it that we get rewarded for suppressing our gifts, first through grades, then through money?

Peter has a gift for music. He can play the saxophone, the fluit and the bass. He has a particular love for jazz music and he spends hours and hours listening to John Coltrane. In his spare time he practices furiously!

But throughout his schooling there was an expectation for him to do physics and computer programming. His parents wanted him to follow this route so he could get into an ivy league university, thereby securing future 'stability.'

Deep down Peter felt there was something undeniably wrong with this scenario. He felt as if he was burying his natural talents under the need to meet certain expectations. He knew he was passionate about music, yet if he followed the path of computer programming, he would only get to explore his passion and refine his musical skills on weekends.

This limited ideology had permeated the very depths of his consciousness, making him feel numb and empty to his core. How long has this line of logic and thinking been permeating human consciousness I wonder? Is this particular logic, one define by limitation built into the very systems that we have created?

Why instead of exploring and nurturing our gifts do we feel the need to adhere to a system that creates an illusion of control, through artificial scarcity. This notion of artificial scarcity means that we end repressing our gifts and passions to be part of a system that is defined by limitation.

And because scarcity has been built into our very consciousness, our thoughts, our beliefs and our ideologies have been shaped by a sense of limit. Underlying this sense of limit lies the need to control. We think that if we can just get control of everything then everything will be perfect. And we spend most of our lives trying to implement the illusion of control.

Only by really digging into and questioning our ideologies, beliefs and patterns of thinking are we able to see if these assumptions or beliefs are built on and defined by limit. Or, do they stem from our deep inner selves, where our unique gifts lie? Do we pick up the saxophone so that we may play and showcase our gifts, or do we limit ourselves to some other ideology that, although may provide an illusion of control, serves to reinforce limitation?