Share Five Things I’m Good At 

I.  
They said,  
list what you’re good at.  
Five things only.  
As if self-knowledge could be measured  
in neat quantities.  
As if I could fold my entire becoming  
into a handful of sentences.  

Still, I try.  
Not to boast,  
but to see myself clearly,  
maybe for the first time in a long while.  
To hold these truths  
as gently as one cradles a small bird—  
alive, trembling, uncertain if it will stay.  

Because the act of naming what you love in yourself  
isn’t vanity.  
It’s remembering you are worth listening to.  
That the quiet gifts you offer the world  
have meaning  
even when the world doesn’t stop to notice.  

So I lean into honesty,  
into the warmth of late-night reflection,  
into the mirror that doesn’t judge but receives,  
and begin to speak.  

***

1. I’m good at listening.

There’s a calm that settles around me  
when someone speaks,  
a gravity that draws their words  
into orbit around my silence.  
I listen the way forests listen—  
to wind, to rain, to what remains  
after sound has passed.  

It started in childhood.  
I watched adults talk over each other,  
words like pebbles skimming surfaces,  
never sinking deep.  
I learned then  
that silence has power.  
That stillness can be invitation,  
not absence.  

Listening isn’t passive;  
it’s presence, practice, patience.  
It means tuning into breaths,  
to the quiver before confession,  
to the tremor that says  
there’s more beneath the sentence.  

I hear stories in voices—  
how one syllable can hold exhaustion,  
how another laughs just to disguise hurt.  
People bring me their chaos like oceans,  
and I become shoreline.  
They crash. I stay.  
And when they leave, lighter somehow,  
I never tell them that their words remain—  
like tide lines drawn into memory.  

I suppose I listen  
because I know the hunger of being unheard.  
That ache left its lessons in me.  
Now my silence is a gift I give back—  
an open space,  
a place where noise turns into understanding.  

***

2. I’m good at turning pain into language.  

I write the way trees bleed sap—  
slowly, deliberately,  
a release and a record.  
Every scar has a rhythm,  
and I have learned to speak in those meters.  

Pain visits like an old teacher  
who never softens their lessons.  
At first, I resisted,  
tried to bury what hurt under reason.  
But grief is stubborn.  
It demands ink.  
It wants to live outside the body.  

So I began to write.  
Not for an audience,  
but for survival.  
A notebook became a mirror  
where I could rearrange my sadness  
into beauty I could bear.  

There are pages filled with storms—  
unfinished apologies,  
letters never sent,  
the ashes of promises I kept too long.  
But also, among them,  
are tiny miracles:  
a poem that forgave someone I couldn’t,  
a story that held my younger self  
like sunlight through cracked glass.  

Pain taught me alchemy.  
To turn loss into language,  
to shape suffering into something still capable of giving.  
Even when nothing makes sense,  
writing creates a bridge—  
a way home through words.  

And maybe that’s what art really is:  
translated endurance.  
A hymn offered by those  
who refuse to go silent  
even when trembling.  

***

3. I’m good at finding meaning where others see routine.  

I was never drawn to the obvious.  
It’s the in-between moments I love—  
the silver hush before dawn,  
the smell of old books breathing dust and wisdom,  
the way light unbuttons its golden shirt  
and spills quietly across a floor no one’s looked at twice.  

Every ordinary thing hums differently  
if you listen long enough.  
The kettle sings not just of tea,  
but of beginnings.  
A door creaks with memory.  
A thread on a sleeve holds  
the ghost touch of someone’s hand.  

I remember once watching a cracked pavement  
collect rainwater,  
the reflection trembling with clouds.  
It looked, for a second,  
like the sky had fallen  
just to meet the ground halfway.  
That’s meaning to me—  
when the mundane bows to the miraculous,  
when opposites momentarily embrace.  

This habit can be inconvenient.  
I’m the kind of person who pauses mid-step  
to photograph a shadow on a wall,  
who stares at a stranger wondering  
what story sits behind their sigh.  
It makes living slower,  
but also, deeper.  

Because the world, when truly seen,  
is made of countless small devotions:  
a cup of chai shared in silence,  
a bird’s leftover feather caught in wind,  
a child’s unfiltered laughter piercing busyness open.  
Meaning is everywhere;  
it hides best in plain sight.  

***

4. I’m good at holding contradictions.  

There’s both chaos and clarity in me.  
I’m the kind who will question everything  
and still believe in miracles.  
I crave solitude like oxygen  
and yet I bloom among people  
like an unexpected flower in a city alley.  

Once, I hated this tug-of-war within me—  
the way I could love fiercely  
and detach suddenly,  
how I could forgive deeply  
yet forget almost never.  
But the older I get,  
the more I see wholeness  
is not about consistency.  
It’s about coherence—  
the art of letting complexity coexist.  

I’m a realist who writes dreams,  
a skeptic who meditates,  
a wanderer who craves home.  
Contradictions, to me,  
are proof of expansion.  
Even stars collapse to shine.  

This ability to hold opposites  
makes me kind without being naive,  
hopeful without denial.  
It helps me see people in full light—  
their virtues and flaws braided together,  
each necessary for depth.  
To hold contradictions  
is to love the world honestly.  
To understand that peace and turbulence,  
like inhale and exhale,  
belong to the same breath.  

***

5. I’m good at starting over.  

It’s not something I boast about.  
Starting over usually means  
something has broken.  
But somewhere between losing and rebuilding,  
I found grace.  

Life has unmade me many times—  
with heartbreaks, failures,  
and unexpected silences.  
At first, those collapses felt final.  
Like standing in a house  
watching the lights go out  
one by one.  

But fear has a limit,  
and after it spills over,  
you learn to walk again in the dark.  
You learn the gentle science  
of rearranging fragments  
without rushing to look whole.  

I’ve started over in cities  
where no one knew my name.  
I’ve loved again after thinking  
I never could.  
I’ve written again  
after staring at blank pages for years.  
Each time, starting over  
looked different—  
sometimes a small decision,  
sometimes a rebellion.  

Resilience is not glamor;  
it’s the quiet art of showing up.  
Each dawn teaches it better than any mentor.  
The sun never announces its comeback;  
it just rises.  
And so do I.  

I’m good at that.  
At forgiving myself for endings,  
at making new rhythms from ruins.  
Beginning, again and again,  
until the motion feels like praise.  

***

II.  
Five things.  
And yet, they spill beyond counting.  
Each one touches another—  
like roots connecting underground,  
feeding the unseen whole.  

Listening gives me language;  
language gives me meaning;  
meaning gives me the courage  
to hold my contradictions;  
contradictions give me the strength  
to begin anew.  

Each gift is a season in the same garden.  
And this garden, wild and restless,  
is me—  
flawed, blooming, unfinished,  
a sum of small steadfast things.  

I think being good at something  
isn’t always about mastery or show.  
Sometimes, it’s about devotion.  
About tending the same truths quietly  
even when no one watches.  
About becoming gentle toward your own becoming.  

***

III.  
When I think of what I’m good at,  
I don’t see achievements.  
I see moments:  

A friend crying at midnight  
while my silence held her grief intact.  
A line I wrote years ago  
that found its way to a stranger’s pulse.  
A walk beneath streetlights  
where I whispered forgiveness to the stars.  
A morning when I made coffee,  
watched the steam rise,  
and finally felt at peace.  

These moments  
are not trophies.  
They are testaments—  
to resilience, compassion,  
creativity, renewal.  

And maybe that’s enough.  
To know you gave what you could:  
presence instead of answers,  
understanding instead of judgment,  
faith instead of fear.  

***

IV.  
If you ask me now—  
in this quiet hour where memory hums softly—  
what I’m good at,  
I might no longer list five things.  
I might tell you instead:  

I’m good at being human.  
At learning, leaving, returning.  
At growing softer instead of bitter  
when life becomes an echo.  

I’m good at carrying stories,  
some that belong to me,  
some whispered by others.  
I’m good at building meaning  
where there once was only ache.  
At loving people  
for their incompleteness.  
At forgiving myself  
for mine.  

***

V.  
So maybe the truth is this:  
I’m not just good at five things.  
I’m good at living through the unseen ones—  
the thousand invisible skills  
that keep the soul upright.  

At breathing deeply when overwhelmed.  
At beginning again on uncertain mornings.  
At finding metaphors in ordinary air.  
At holding joy and grief  
in the same cupped palm.  

And if each person carries  
their own constellation of gifts,  
then mine glow quietly—  
steady, unshowy,  
but always burning.  

So here’s my list,  
written not in stone but in motion,  
a promise to myself and to life:  

To keep listening.  
To keep translating.  
To keep noticing.  
To keep holding.  
To keep beginning.  

Each a practice,  
each a prayer,  
each a way of staying alive  
to the symphony  
of being human.