Be a Gold Digger

I visited my brother Ernie recently at PGH when he got confined for a minor foot operation. Ernie is actually a doctor at PGH. We had an animated conversation as he related how he found himself in a somewhat unfamiliar situation: as a patient.

"It’s weird," he said. "I was being pushed in a wheelchair and all my patients saw me and had this perplexed look and asked me, ‘Doc, what the heck happened to you?’" Must have been traumatic for them. Imagine, seeing your doctor in a wheelchair! It’s like your lawyer being sued. It’s not very reassuring, is it?

Anyway, Ernie went on and explained how his operation went. I had a laugh when he explained how he had to be anesthetized – he was given a spinal shot – and how when they raised his leg, he could see his foot but he couldn’t feel it. "It was like someone else’s foot. It was sort of an ‘out of body’ experience."

Yeah, we all know how that feels, right? When you sleep on your arm for hours and when you wake up, you have this weird sensation that your arm is missing and you can’t feel it. It’s just numb. You try to pinch it but you still can’t feel it. You try to lift it with your other hand and when you let go, it just plops stiffly like a dead branch. You try to touch it with your other hand and your hand can feel it but the "dead arm" can’t feel the touch. And then, after a while, blood rushes in and you get the whole "pins and needles" feeling. Then, it becomes a natural part of your body again.

Sleeping On Our Limbs Is Like Sleeping On Our Talents

I’m really amused at how our arms can get so numb whenever we put our weight on them for a long time. Or how our legs get temporarily paralyzed when we squat on them. One minute you can use them with ease, the next moment you don’t feel them, and after a while, they are back again.

When this happens to me, I get into what I call my "what could have been" mode. I wonder if, just like my arm getting temporarily paralyzed, I had some unique talent or skill or passion that I may have had inside me all this time that I "slept" on. Did I have a skill that I paralyzed unconsciously and thus prevented its development forever?

These days, I often find myself in a mode of self-doubt. Maybe it’s because the world seems to be going so fast and I don’t know if I can cope or if I have the skill and talent to be relevant in this world. But when I recall my childhood and early adult life, I realize that I had quite a lot of talents.

When I was a kid, for example, I was quite a performer. I would memorize all the dialogue in Looney Tunes cartoons and perform them solo in front of my appreciative friends. I would mime Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Bird, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck – you name it. For a while, people really wondered if I was related to Willie Nepomuceno what with all my impersonations. I wondered, too, where I got this talent. But eventually, I got embarrassed doing it and I just stopped. I slept on it.

When I was Grade 3, I swear, I was the fastest kid in our class. I remember distinctly that every lunch time, I would challenge my classmates to a race from one end of the football field to the other. I would always win! I also remember winning the long jump contest. I jumped 10 feet and two inches – a great feat for an eight-year-old! I remember my classmates lifting me on their shoulders when I won. But alas, I got lazy and considered running a chore. As soon as I started liking girls, I hung my running shoes forever. I slept on this skill, too.

When I was high school and college, I was really involved in theater. It was my life. I would work long hours and perform in school plays. And I loved the rehearsals. But then my grades started to suffer. And someone told me there is not much money in theater. So, eventually, I just gave it up. Again, I put another possible skill to sleep.

Whenever I have that paralyzed-arm feeling, I often wonder if I had let several opportunities slip by because I slept on my talents. Or I didn’t nurture them enough. I had the passion, and to a certain extent, some talent in the fields I dabbled in. But I just kinda took them for granted. I might have ruined any chance of achieving some level of success in those fields.

I have a lot of people telling me that they feel "talentless" or that they have don’t have any marketable skills. But if you dig deep enough, you will realize that there is a part of you that’s made of gold. All of us have a special talent and skill, the only difference is that others find their gift earlier than others. Often, we sleep on our skills because we are either lazy – or we feel they are not worthwhile endeavors. But if you really think about it, if you are really good at something – or at least very interested – you are wasting a golden opportunity if you don’t go out of your way and develop your skills in that particular area or if you don’t spur your interest further.

When I was in grade 3, I won third place in an interpretative reading contest where I had to read aloud a piece to a panel of judges. The idea was for them to judge my elocution. I never really thought about it much back then, but it was probably this skill that helped me get newscasting jobs later in life.

If you think you don’t have any talent or skill, think again. It’s somewhere inside you. If you find out what you like to do, your talent is not too far away.

So be a gold digger: Dig deep within you and you will surely find gold.

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Thanks for your letters. You may write me at nepomucenor@mtv-asia.com.