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Primary 4 was the first time in school that we had to write compositions. It was so long ago that I can only remember one of them, the very first one.
The topic was: “My pet”. I wrote about how I kept white mice as pets at home. Actually, they were my older brothers’. I wrote about them saying, among other things, how I enjoyed seeing them run around inside a wheel.
Then the teacher announced the results. The whole class had done badly. Out of 44 pupils, only 17 passed. The rest failed. I remember feeling very discouraged and worried. I must have failed.
Then came the surprise. Not only did I pass, but I topped the class. Of course I was happy. I needed not have worried. But how was I to know? How was a 10-year-old to know whether he wrote well or badly?
This was not like mathematics or science, where one either got the answers right or wrong. This was a test of writing. I had absolutely no idea that I could write well.
Throughout the rest of school, my compositions - which became essays when we grew older - were usually among the better ones. Yet I never considered myself to be a good writer. One of my classmates, in particular, I thought was a much better writer than I.
Yet I have gone on to earn a living as a writer. To the best of my knowledge, the classmate whose writings I admired has, since leaving school, written one unpublished short story and not much else.
It really took me a long time to realise that I have a talent for writing. When I completed university, I applied to work as a journalist with a business newspaper not because I wanted to be a writer nor because I felt I would make a good journalist. It was merely one of more than a dozen jobs that I applied for. The rest were for banking, administrative, management, foreign service and other positions.
No big deal
I never expected to get the job, but I did. I remember my friend who was already working there telling me it was no big deal. I did not believe her. I did not think I was good enough.
Yet I was already writing semi-professionally before that. While at university, I wrote a column in a young people's magazine called Fanfare, which later changed its name to GO Magazine, that took a light-hearted look at classical music. I had started my writing career as a “columnist” not realising that such a position was usually reserved for more senior writers.
It was only after some years of working in the newspaper, where I was quite rapidly promoted and assigned to write the more important articles like editorials and commentaries, only after having a number of people say that they enjoyed my articles, that I finally realised that I write well.
What took me so long to recognise my talent, my gift? Was I blind or what?
There is a spiritual teaching about how our prayers are already answered even before we pray, about how we already have everything we need and everything that we might ask for.
We only need to realise - to wake up to the fact - that we already have these things.
It sure took a long time for me to realise that I have the gift for writing. Makes me wonder what other gifts I might have, but which I still do not know about.