Good day all, this is a small introduction to who I am. My name is Patrick and I am from the United States. These days I enjoy pushing to the sky the limits of religion, philosophy, science and all variations of this great Trinity. Challenging the establishment views of physics, biology, nutrition, astronomy, politics and environmental science. But that was not always the case.
When I was a child, the only thing I wanted from life was to play every instrument under the sun. Pretty lofty goal, right?
I spent a few years learning many instruments, but never found the right one; with some instruments I considered myself an average player, but that's OK – at least I could do it!
One day, I decided it was time to learn how to play the drums. I started with a snare drum, and I was fair at playing that. Next, the tom-toms, the bass drum, symbols, and so on.
(Image from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Platin_Drums_PTCL2016_AF.jpg)
I worked, day in and out on it, striving at making sense out of this set of drums. I banged on them countless hours, struggling to find my beat – to make them all work together for me, in my hands.
My friend, being a kind soul, walked in on me playing the drum set one day and said, “You know, you look like an absolute maniac flailing around like that.”
(Image from http://weheartit.com/entry/group/22300821)
Skip forward several decades later. I still think of playing that drum set occasionally. No set of lessons, studying or books could have taught my feet and hands to move like they should with the drums. My beats always ended up off course a bit, and I’ve resigned to myself that:
1) I can’t do everything myself and
2) If I need a real drummer, I might as well go ahead and hire a professional.
The moral of my story is, I know what I can and can’t achieve in life. My ‘cup of tea’ is not a drum set, but I know of many individuals who are very good at the drums. To understand the whole picture sometimes we have to take a step back from our specializations too, and look at the whole picture. We need an open community to discover the secrets that are hidden.
While it may be true that one can do anything under the Sun, that isn't to say that you can do it all. In my experience by admitting your weaknesses, by saying “I’m not a book keeper” or “I’m not a web designer” or "I don’t know my head from a hole in the ground in regards to this or that” will set you apart from the crowd.
For instance: I know next to nothing about auto repair. I know it has something to do with the mechanical workings inside of cars and trucks; but what good does that do me? However, I do know a friend of mine who has ample knowledge of how automobiles work, and this is his niche. Thus, every time I need car repairs I go to my friend.
Everyone forgets sometimes that we can’t do everything, and takes on a project we are not qualified. But it's important that we not only find our place, but also figure out what we can't accomplish successfully by ourselves, and pass it on to someone who does.
I can't play the drums, but I am not too bad at throwing together a beat. I can't spell, remember phone numbers nor do bookkeeping/accounting, but am a whiz at taking apart dogma, thinking outside the box and graphic design. How about you?