Better to Speak or to Act?

I often wonder which is more useful - someone who can do but can not speak, or someone who can speak, but can not do.

I am sitting on a bench under a staircase and I am feeling lonely because I have nobody to talk to. This is a very dark experience, and I am beginning to think that I made a big mistake by coming to China. I am lonely to start with. Take away my friends, my family, my familiar surroundings, my free time, my privacy and my food, and you will leave me a very unhappy camper. I thought this trip would be exciting, but it is highly lonely and boring. I don't find my classes interesting, and I spend more nervous energy trying to wait for the professor to spit out the thought than I do actually learning the material. Today I started zoning out which indicates to me that I am not holding in a good place.

Could this program be one of those many one-time sacrifices I have endured throughout my lifetime, law school being another one of them? I desire more than anything to find one activity I enjoy doing and then to do it very well.

Maybe it is for that reason that I value doing more than speaking. Speaking often involves a myriad range of topics. Doing can be repeated until perfection is reached. I am feeling right now that I find value in this.

However, doing often requires practice and rote, while speaking often requires thought. Should one sacrifice one given talent to develop another? This would be my dilemma because I have been given the gift of deep thought. My thinking practice is not swift and flighty like a bird, but rather, it is slow and momentous like a tank with all its power.

I wouldn't even know how my acting or singing skills are, because I have not exploited them to the best of their use in many years. But even with this dormancy, they have come to the surface in a myriad of ways, nudging me and telling me that I should be using them. I thought maybe using them to develop cantorial skills might have been the answer, but this is, if anything, not even a piece of it. What is this drive of mine? Why does it come out so fervently every time I see someone perform? How do I act on this and not throw away every other part of my life that I have carefully crafted and built? This is the question that will haunt me until I stumble until the answer.

Added 12:31 pm - I guess I wigged out after writing this because I just left class. I couldn't be in that classroom anymore. I'll consolidate and get myself together over the weekend. Next week will be better.