Positive psychologists tell us that one of the unfailing ways to identify our own gifts is to notice what it is that moves us into an emotional zone beyond consciousness of time. When is it that we say with total honesty and simplicity, “I had no idea that it was already midnight when I stopped knitting.”

I remember the Saturdays I couldn’t wait to get into the small darkroom to develop and print the film I’d shot during the week. I loved the smell of the chemicals and the soft red light and the sight of the black-and-white print emerging in the swirling waters of the tray of developing fluid. In that room all time stopped for me. There was only one thing driving the work: the sheer giddy joy of producing what my mind had created and the knowledge that this exercise in getting something out of nothing would appear in the next issue of the little magazine I loved. My professional education was in other things.

A gift is a very personal part of us. It’s special. It taps in us what nothing else in life can even begin to explore. And yet so many of us make so little of our gifts, consider them “hobbies” more than specialties, go so far sometimes as even to hide them from public sight. But it is in our giftedness that our future lies. To be really happy, we must either follow our gifts or find our gifts. Otherwise we run the risk of going to our graves only half alive.

When we finally take that first step toward being honest about what we ourselves really believe, really want to do, really enjoy most, are really committed to doing for others—and do it—we become a person who is a gift to the human race. Then the wisdom in us becomes a benefice to the rest of the world. Then we come closer to being our own true selves.

—from Following the Path by Joan Chittister (Image)