Sharing our skills to make our community a better place

Matt Sehnert shares doughnut-making skills during a Bison Days event.

Courtesy photo

I must be honest. I write these columns just a few hours before the deadline because writing comes fairly easy to me. It is a skill I have had most of my life but it is still a skill I have worked to improve over time.

On the other hand, the skills I don’t possess far outnumber the skills I do have.

Consider public speaking. My voice gets shaky. I don’t know where to look. And like many people, I talk quickly and use the word “um” too often to fill the dead space while I think.

My list of things I haven’t mastered or don’t even have a clue about doesn’t end there.

An electrician could be speaking to me in a foreign language based on my level of knowledge about electricity. I truly appreciate the lights in my house turning on every morning because I don’t have any idea how electricity works.

I would quickly become a vegetarian if I had to procure the meat needed for dinner. And those cows roaming in the field behind my house? They would die of old age before I would have the nerve to slaughter them or the knowledge on how to process them.

In fact, I readily acknowledge that there is more that I don’t know in this world than I do know.

But give me a keyboard or a pen and paper and I can churn out words for hours. It won’t be a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel but hopefully, it is a written piece that is usually entertaining, occasionally thought-provoking and sometimes motivating.

Whenever I walk around a neighborhood or roll through a town on my bicycle, I look around in awe of everything I don’t know, whether it is how it was created, how it was built, or how it came to be.

Conversely, I am thankful and grateful that other people who do know these things, who use their imagination and motivation to create these things or who have the skills to make these things happen.

Everyone likely has a skill that they can share with others. Perhaps it is a passion that you would like others to learn. It could be your job or it could be a hobby. It could just be something that brings you joy, a feeling you want others to experience.

Every June, talented performers descend upon McCook for the Buffalo Commons Storytelling and Music Festival. Whether it is a rehearsed set or a spontaneous request, the storytellers and musicians are able to hop on stage and beautifully and thoughtfully recite a poem or sing a song from memory, without skipping a beat.

My brother, Jim, loves helping others and combines that desire with his physical strength to move whatever is needed. He jumps at the opportunity to get involved, from moving furniture and appliances to hauling irrigation pipe and farm equipment.

In the past, Pat Weskamp has created candy/gift bags that he puts together throughout the year for others in the community on the holidays. And it’s a double bonus. He makes people feel better because they have the satisfaction of donating to the project while making people feel better when they receive the goodie bag.

Every November during the Big Give, Lisa Felker and Melissa Stritt at MNB Bank spend hours in front of their computers, inputting donations and tallying totals for dozens of non-profits. Looking at a spreadsheet for a few minutes makes my eyes glaze over, yet they are almost gleeful that they get to spend hours tabulating columns and balancing rows.

I walk into my accountant’s office with a folder overflowing with documents and paperwork. And yet when I return a few weeks later, I find an organized file telling me how much I owe the government.

I am waiting for her to tell me one of these days how much I am owed, yet that never happens. I guess, skills - at least when kept legal - only go so far.

And the McCook Public Schools’ Bison Days is a great example of bringing all these ideas together. During Bison Days, volunteers share their skills, their interests, and their hobbies with the McCook high school students.

The only motivation is to pass along what they have learned to these young people, perhaps sparking an interest in the topic or deepening their knowledge of the subject.

I truly appreciate what the people around us do to make every day a little bit better and which makes our community a little bit nicer.

Sharing our skills, our interests and our passions with others is how each and every one of us make McCook and Southwest Nebraska an even better place to call home.