obvious to you, amazing to others

This week, I came across this fantastic wee animation on a blog post by Jon Acuff, author of Stuff Christians Like. He captioned it with If you have 1:37 today, spend it watching Derek Sivers' video "Obvious to you. Amazing to others". I was busy, but not so busy that I couldn't spare a minute and a half, so I watched it. And I would warmly encourage you to do the same, especially if you're feeling a bit rubbish about yourself today.

I love the last sentence: "Are you holding back something that seems too obvious to share?" and it challenged me, which is why I'm sharing it with you. It's so easy to downplay our own talents and gifts and to keep them to ourselves rather than use them, for a variety of reasons. The worry of appearing arrogant. The prospect of being laughed at. The idea of failure. The fear that someone will trample all over what you've offered to them. But after watching this little video, I was struck by two truths. The first was "Everybody's ideas seem obvious to them".

This week, I emailed a musician at our church and mentioned that I was in awe of brass players because I found the thought of playing the trumpet or trombone or euphonium to be too much of a challenge; I just don't relate to brass instruments. He reciprocated with "I'm in awe of pianists as I can't get my head around multiple lines of music!" Now I'm an okay pianist. I'm not the worst in the world, but I'm a million trillion billion miles away from being the best. I manage all right on the keyboard in church on a Sunday morning, but am afflicted with major confidence problems regarding performance, so in all honesty would really rather not ever play in front of anyone. I even shut the door when I'm playing at home. I have very little regard for any ability that I might have as a pianist, and the idea that playing multiple lines of music is difficult is laughable to me. If I can do it, anyone can! It's obviously the easiest thing in the world! Yet my brass-playing email correspondent doesn't think so. In fact, to quote Derek Sivers' video, "Maybe what's obvious to me is amazing to someone else".

I have recently become a huge fan of "The Big Bang Theory", which features a quartet of physicists. I barely understand a word that such people say (I only passed GCSE Physics because at the time I had a kind and highly intelligent boyfriend who efficiently drilled the entire syllabus into my unscientific mind), yet every thought that passes through their super-scientific brains about atoms or particles or frequencies is entirely obvious to them. They use this ability to make a difference, even a small one, to the way in which we understand the world, and find this very easy to do, although people like me might marvel from afar and feel intimidated that they can consider such an "amazing" thing so "obvious". In addition to physicists and brass players, I am also amazed by people who can speak other languages fluently, programme computers and wire up sound systems. Yet I am assured by friends who can do these things that they are simple. This is proof that "amazing" is a relative concept, in earthly terms.

Which leads me to the second truth. When I haven't had enough sleep or am feeling particularly low about life, it's very easy for me to slip into thinking " Right! I'm a terrible pianist, and the whole church knows it! I am, forthwith, going to resign as the keyboard player!" Often I come quite close to carrying out my sleep-deprived intention. Yet if everyone did this, just because they were fearful of using a skill about which they are deeply insecure, nothing would ever get done. Sermons wouldn't be preached, cars wouldn't be designed and great pieces of music wouldn't be composed - and the list goes on and on. The fact that I can string a few notes together on the keyboard will never be amazing to me, but in this one context, it's potentially a bit of use to someone else. I'm not massively skilled at it. But if I can play the piano even passably I should keep doing so for the glory of God and to serve others who like to sing and to worship, and furthermore should do so graciously, willingly and happily.

"We're clearly a bad judge of our own creations; we should just put it out, and let the world decide." That's what has challenged me today. 

What talent do you have that you downplay? What is obvious to you but amazing to someone else?