“Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A friend recently shared some of her private writing with me and I must say, I was quite impressed! So often what holds people back from sharing their gifts is a fear of rejection, but there is something behind, or beneath that excuse which I would like to expose to the air with you today.
When the matter is viewed from the level of the individual, the blockage relates to fear. But when examined more closely, it is actually defiance which causes this state of restriction and hiding. Allow me to explain. We are all endowed with certain gifts. These gifts are not our talents themselves, but the capacity for the expression of those talents. These capacities are made available to us on the basis of the unique configuration of the spirits of love, truth and life that we represent and in fact are.
To refuse to allow them to be put into service, then, is defiant not only of our inner being, but of the source of being itself. How dare you! I think a better bet would be to dare to give what you have, with no strings attached. Most people would see this a making themselves vulnerable to others, when in reality, they are actually making their outer capacities vulnerable to their inner reality!
Gregory Hake 
The three keys to giving are first, to have something to give, second, to have the courage to give it and third, to find and encourage those who may be willing to receive what you have to offer. Obviously we don’t want to force our gifts on others, and we don’t want to cast pearls before swine in the sense of offering something that is likely to be unappreciated or even desecrated. That being said, our success in life is defined by the degree that our gifts are given and received. Discovering how to do this is the art and science of living.
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Your words sing the exquisite celestial song! It is supremely wonderfully fulfilling to live in such unison.
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I never really thought about that in this light, but this is actually really good news! It seems it would be much easier to face your own defiance than fear. Fear tends to be based on an experience in the past and often not on what is a reality in the moment. Defiance on the other hand is refusal to move, refusal to change. If we want to be able to be ourselves, to be creative and unique, giving our all, we’ll have to let go of the defiance strategy stat!
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I think this relates back to the necessity of taking the time and making the space in our hearts to understand our individual purpose. I imagine our purpose would be absolutely aligned with what we have to give. It may be that this capacity atrophies with little use; so as we age it’s not as much as we can become diminished by changes in our physical capacities but we suffer from an undeveloped capacity of the giving of ourselves.
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Restricting the expression of light into the world is not humility. Humility is letting the light shine.
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I believe that inside each of us are talents and gifts that compliment one to the other. I know my greatest block has always been fear, rejection and I can see where defiance takes its place there. I have written poetry since I was a child and I have always loved to draw, but over the years, I allowed these things to become distant memories as I compared my work to others and became discouraged. Ultimately your post helps reveal the selfishness wrapped around withholding that which is creative and beautiful. It is not our place to criticize or judge, we are designed to be creative and when we refuse to participate we imprision that inner spark you so often speak of! How dare we? How dare I? Thanks for your encouragement.
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When you think of it this way, hiding your inner talents could be described as preventing the world from being a better place. It is even sadder if you view the cumulative effects of the entire human race doing this. The world could be changed in a single day, in a single instant, if people just dared to be themselves.
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All I could hear after I read this was “Let freedom ring!” That expression may have specific history with the civil rights movement, but I couldn’t help but feel the spirit of your words having the power for each individual to end once and for all the conditions which keep the unique expression of God through them imprisoned. Your words are an expose that this is in fact the case, and I embrace the open door to let authentic freedom ring.
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Thank You! I never thought about talents and capabilities, and our use or non use of them in this way before. But upon thinking about what you have written today, I realize that you absolutely are telling us the truth of this. Our Lifes are limited just as much by that we do not do, as it is by what we do chose to do. Both can become self inflicted restrictions to our own potential of living Life to it’s greatest honour, but also that of the Creator. We do not realize how far reaching everything in mind or body shifts what we can not know or understand within the unknown.
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