Ingenuity (Part 2)

Last week, I told the story of how I ripped up some Ziploc sandwich bags to make a belt for my pants.

I brought this story up because it reminds me of the reasons I had chosen to major in Mechanical Engineering when I entered college. Sadly, I am not still majoring in that, but it’s not because I couldn’t do it. I do have the mind for it, but it just wasn’t my passion and it’s so rigorous that you really need to love it to stick with it.

But one big requirement for that discipline, is a love or willingness to problem solve. I really love to fix a problem in a tangible way, which is exactly what I did in the story I mentioned before, but I can’t take all the credit for this passion.

My Beautiful Mom & I

My mom has this ability to see something that needs to be fixed and she comes up with a way to solve it. Sometimes it won’t be the most conventional fix, but it will always work.

When I started my previous major of Mechanical Engineering, I felt betrayed that my mother had the same capabilities as I did, but she grew up in a society that frowned on women entering such a technical field. Anger for her missed opportunity burned within me, but I now know that frustration was misplaced.

Having since transferred out from that major, I’ve realized that just because we have certain gifts doesn’t mean that we have to us them for only one big purpose.

I’m now majoring in a much more creative and artistic degree and I couldn’t be happier. I was miserable with Mechanical Engineering, but I thought that since I could do it, then I had to. That same thought process was what made me so angry with my mom’s inability to be an engineer, but she is just like me: where our passions rest more with the arts.

In having certain gifts (that God gives us in his infinite wisdom), we don’t have to use them all for grand, big things. I used to think my gift for problem solving meant I had to pursue a technical career, but I’ve since realized that ability is more to fix everyday problems like in the story I told and that’s perfectly okay.

Sometimes the gifts we have are supposed to be used in subtler manners, or just in different ways than our feeble minds could even imagine.

God gave us these abilities for a reason, but He is the one who knows all and truly sees why we are the way we are.