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Growing up as a kid, I wanted to be a DJ. I remember my late father’s colleagues at work cracking up once about the Deejay son of a Water Engineer. As I grew older, my dream careers kept shifting; I wanted to be a rapper, lawyer, producer, writer, actor, professional dancer and TV Presenter all at different stages of my life. Crazy, I know. All these were triggered by my always-evolving hobbies, most of them clearly music-related. Did they stick? See, the thing about hobbies is that they’re allowed to come and go. They evolve with age. Their cousin Talent, though, sticks around all the way. Once a singer, always a singer. Once a good public speaker, always one. Once a gifted soccer player, forever one. Till old age do you apart.

We’re unfortunate enough, as a generation, to have been born and bred in an age where the world is emphasizing formal education as a fundamental, if not the only, way to success in life. Worse still, we’re living under a government system that is making effort to trash the role of the arts in society. Our minds, and our children’s minds, have been crippled with the universal opinion that pursuing a career in fields of sciences will always have an upper hand in life, ironically by politicians who themselves undertook the arts and aren’t scientists. A top leader in the country said in a recent speech that Uganda was full of employment opportunities, and that the only reason we were marred with unemployment was because the youth were pursuing “useless courses” at university!! What exactly that was supposed to mean, we’ll never know.  Why would useless courses be taught in the first place under his watch?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not disposing of the importance of education. I wouldn’t be able to write this well let alone write at all, if it wasn’t for education. But education, in my opinion, is supposed to sharpen your mindset and perspective of life; to groom your Intelligence Quotient. It’s supposed to help you become better at what you’d like to do with yourself, not necessarily dictate what to do with yourself in future. Yes, go to College. Get a degree, related or not to talents you had before you went there. But don’t be so quick to trash the things you knew, the gifts you had before those professors pretended to know you more than you knew yourself. It’s a very good thing to pursue a career in line with what you studied; I know the feeling of accomplishment. But you know a more accomplished and complete feeling? Applying what you love to do, what you’re GIFTED BY GOD to do, in your daily life as well. It could be applying it in your career or taking it on as a secondary career. Either way, God did not gift you and make you unique for nothing.

US Presidential hopeful Dr. Ben Carson is a phenomenal neurosurgeon. You know what else he is? An author, a motivational speaker and a life coach. All not studied, but groomed as gifts. All of which are the greater reason America, and you and I, know him. Patrick “Salvador” Idringi is a certified engineer. He’s better known as a stand-up comedian and radio personality, and has quite frankly had more positive influence on society and his own life with his talent-turned-professions than his career as an engineer. Now, THAT’S accomplishment.

The list is endless. Point is, granted, you can make a flourishing career out of what you studied at school and make top dollar. It would be a smart move, though, to also dig up that talent that you’ve always branded a leisure-time hobby, or a way to impress the girls, and explore and exploit it to its very core. You can bring out the very best in you if you give your gifts a chance to come out and show themselves to the world. Unleash your Art, your Music, your Football, your Drama, your Photography, your Writing, your Speech; release them. There’s a place for you and your talent. But only YOU and no one else will get you there. What’s the worst that could happen? You’ll be happy doing what you love, probably changing the world for someone out there in ways you and I don’t even know AND still earning top dollar for it. Chase your childhood dream, my friend. Your life was something before you went to school; why should your future be restricted to what school taught you? Make it your other career to do what you actually love to do. Good luck. Bless.

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0 Replies to “DON’T BE SO QUICK TO SHOVE YOUR TALENTS ASIDE”

  1. Akampurira says:

    Me, starting from an age of 4 years, I used to see my whole career in soccer, I used to think at this age I would playing professional football. Am i ?, not really.
    just the environment I lived in and the rules that were guiding me couldn’t allow accomplish it, the rules were anti soccer and leading with this formal education.
    Thanks for the message, it was explaining part of me though me unfortunately I shove the great talent away because of the environment.

    Reply

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