When I was slaving away some years at school, they had a band that played for the gatherings and such. It was led by a talented guy that also taught some music classes and helped put together albums (or CD's or whatever the equivalent is now. EP's?).
If you had a penchant for music, if you were talented at the piano, electric guitar, bass, if you could sing like a diva (or at least on key) or could pound away on the bongos in time, you could try out for the band.
One semester, a guy showed up that was a virtuoso on the stringed instruments. Guitar, bass, lute, mandolin. He even played like mad on the banjo a few times. This guy was awesome. No wonder they let him in the band almost the moment he started school.
Unfortunately in order to be in the band, they had some restrictive rules. Among them: You had to go to class. Apparently some of these guidelines were unobtainable for this maestro, and he was soon gone.
While his talent was missed, the band didn't suffer too much. The other players worked hard to stick with the program and bring quality tunes to the rest of us.
Dazzling reflection #2:
When I was working as an associate at a Church, the Pastor told me one day that he had met someone who had changed his life. He said this man had told him things he needed to know, had helped him more than he could imagine and would be leading the services on Sunday. The best part was, he had just met him the day before.
Being slightly more cynical than the Pastor, I was less than impressed when I met this modern day Elijah.
Maybe it was when he told me he was following his wife around because he thought she was having an affair and when I rode in his car with him, we went hunting his two timing wife.
Maybe it was when the napkin he was using dropped a little bit of lint onto his pants and he tried desperately to get his dinner for free, doing everything short of punching out the waitress.
Whatever it was, something didn't impress me about this guy. But, our Pastor was sure that the cosmos would be realigned now that this guy had shown up. Sadly for him, this guy was gone in a week or so and things quickly went back to normal.
It seems that Talent and Charisma are dazzling. But, they do not compare with character and discipline.
The takeaway, If you need one( Cause who hasn't seen people picked to do a job that fall apart soon, or do things that embarrass everyone? And who hasn't said, "I could have called that?):
Maybe if you are hiring someone, you shouldn't just look at what the person can do, but also at whether or not they have the character and discipline to keep doing it.
If you are working for someone, work hard to develop your talents and to be like-able and easy to work with, but work harder to develop your character and to discipline yourself to do the job.
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