Being Capable, Blog Post 1

You know what it's like to be a genius, but do you know how to be capable?  Many of us don't. Due to our exquisitely tuned minds, we might find ourselves struggling with perceptions and experiences that others can't begin to comprehend.  We keep our eyes out for that one person who might possibly understand even a portion of what we feel.  We seek someone who enjoys thinking for its own sake.  We want a buddy who knows the pure rush, the high, we get when we work a math problem or solve a conundrum. We want to talk to someone who knows that our brains will eat themselves if we don't give them something to chew on.

While so many people seem to love the simple, we crave the complex—in fact, for some of us the simple is actually beyond our comprehension—like trying to analyse the exact muscle fibers we use while walking.

We sometimes feel great superiority above the crowd of “normals”, yet sometimes we long to be with them, wishing we could move in social circles as easily as others.  We either decide to eschew society in a fit of superior resentment, stewing in our own haughtiness and pain for the rest of our lives, or we consistently put ourselves out there, raw and bleeding, and feel each rejection as a personal reflection on us.

We have so many answers.  We often know the best ways to make stuff happen, to solve problems, but find it increasingly difficult to get our ideas accepted.  It is actually awesome for us, sometimes, when people say “Honestly, I have no idea what you are talking about.” with a deeply apologetic smile, and we bristle when people ignore or scoff at our thoughts.

We have so many questions that people cannot answer for us or that we don't want to ask.  It would be nice to have someone say “Here, this is what you are feeling and why.  This is how you solve this problem.  This is your purpose in life.  This is your great gift, and this is not your strong suit.  This is how to find peace in your mind and in your circumstances.”.  Our difficulty lies, though, in the fact that we have questions about ourselves that we think (often rightly) that no one can begin to comprehend.  A marathon runner can't go to a 5^th grader at recess and say “Hey, I find that on mile 14, I start to hit the wall.  What is the best way for me to manage that break in focus?” or “How can I manage both a stress fracture and plantar fasciitis in the same foot?”.  It is not that the 5^th grader is not a fine young runner, but he just has not experienced the same amount of running as the marathoner has.

Yet sometimes that 5^th grader in our lives knows the exact right answer to help us, but we are too proud or too superior to follow his advice.   We forget that there is a difference between intelligence and wisdom.  Intelligence is an innate quality—barring any accidents, illnesses, or other problems, a person will stay at approximately the same intellectual stratum that they were born with.  However, wisdom is open to all, regardless of the Weschler score.

That 5^th grader might know exactly how to break through a mental block, or might sagely say “You have to let the bone heal.  It’s ok to stop running for a little while.”.  However, we might scoff at such advice from someone who isn't in the same league as we are, then find that that stress fracture becomes a permanent source of pain and we can never quite overcome that emotional wall that keeps us from developing past mile 14.

This blog is here to guide you through many of the pitfalls that we Outliers encounter.  We will learn the difference between intelligence and wisdom, assertion and arrogance, friendliness and fawning, introspection and “navel staring”, introversion and resentment.  We will learn how to manage our emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual lives to become the most we were made to be.

 

Note:  We use the term genius because that is what we are.  It is not a term of worth or value as a human, it is a descriptor of innate cognitive ability.  A fast runner is a fast runner, even if he also is a bank robber or beats his wife.   Therefore there is no need to blush and hide from accepting the fact that we have been given, through no action or striving on our part, a fast mind.