by Howard Coop

When I first met him, I was not impressed, but in a short time after I got to know him better, we became good friends.

He was limited and unable to go to school to prepare for a profession, but he did go through a special program for limited children in which he discovered that he had a talent for washing windows.

He developed that talent and became very good at it, and with a great deal of pride in his work, he washed windows for almost every business in his hometown.

Well over a hundred years ago, Brenda Ueland wrote, “Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.”

While she may, or may not have been aware of it, she was echoing something that had been written about 1,900 years earlier: “Each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another that.”

Therefore, each individual — regardless of how limited — can do something and do it well. It may not be what somebody else can do, but it is important to use that gift whatever it is. Through discovering that gift and using it, a worthwhile contribution can, and will, be made to human society.

By discovering and using the talents he had, a tall, lanky rail-splitter from Kentucky became, at a crucial point in history, the sixteenth president of the United States of America in 1861, and he became recognized by almost everyone as one of the greater presidents of this nation. Leo Buscaglia said, “Our talents are the gifts God gives to us…what we make of our talents is our gift back to God.”

You may not be able to do everything, but one thing is sure: you can do something.

You have a choice: you can do little, or nothing, or you can use to the best of your ability the talent that you have been given.

Almost 3,000 years ago it was written, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do with all your might.”