I was a very average student at school. On average, I never ranked in the top 10% of the students, but I wasn’t at the bottom either. I was barely dragging along; I saw school as a mundane thing we need to get by through life. I wasn’t excited about writing exams but was interested in learning from the textbooks. Learning has always interested me more than anything. I loved the science experiments and labs, trying to find something that wasn’t known (to us); it was always the learning that piqued my curiosity, and till today, it still drives me every day. There is so much to learn from things around us that multiple lifetimes would fall short of learning or knowing it all.
I wish my school teachers were as exciting or interested in my learning as my first mentor did. I still don’t know what he saw to make me the man I am today. He said, “You needed direction; you had everything else.” I am jealous of the few kids I tutored; they all had trouble making friends, were constantly bored, but had a severe knack for academics, and the secret is – they were all gifted. Yes, somehow, I ended up tutoring a few gifted children; it just fell into my lap, I guess. I still remember this one person (my favorite) who was solving complex quadratic equations at 11. I was very proud of her, but sadly I had to stop tutoring. There was nothing wrong with her; it was me that was the problem. The only difference between her and all others I ever tutored was that she was gifted in academics and had a high EQ and understanding of everyday life. She was homeschooled too – a cherry on the cake. I hope she achieves everything she ever wanted.
I do not think I am gifted at all. I wish I were, but I know I have a crazy passion and drive for what I do for a living, which has carried me until here. I talked to a friend on video two days back, and she said, “If someone looks at you and how far you’ve come and your life trajectory, it is not comprehensible. You were no one; you were just a young boy who was lost and now … yeah.” I took her statement as a grain of salt.
From reading, and learning every day, this is what I know for sure now:
- Everyone learns in a different way; to teach someone something, you need to understand it well yourself and if you can’t explain it to a 5 yr old, you probably don’t understand it well yourself.
- Constantly keep on learning; never stop; the day you stop; life becomes meaningless.
- Have an interest and curiosity about everything; you won’t be good at it but keep an open mind to it.
- Memorizing won’t help you a lot; know how to use information.
- Be able to communicate complex concepts in a simple way to people who aren’t knowledgeable on the topic.
- Know to ask dumb questions, chance is they are many people in the room with the same questions.
- Accept that you will never know everything about any topic, and that’s okay.
- Always keep an open mind to changing your opinion about something; something that is irrelevant today might not be tomorrow.
- Always be calm while debating or discussing a topic; the moment you raise your voice, you’ve already lost the argument.
- Have a sense of humor in everything you do. It makes everything 10x enjoyable.
- The bigger man walks away from a fight.
- “Never argue with idiots; they will bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.” – Mark Twain.
- Listen more than you talk.
- Listen to understand; not to reply.
But all of the above is meaningless if you are a condescending person, to begin with.
It is not binary; you can be a gifted and a decent person at the same time.
Downside:
There is a downside to this, and I feel something is morally and mentally wrong with me for thinking this. Life becomes unbearable sometimes when people have apparent, banal, and time-wasting conversations. You can’t match them mentally because you always see life beyond travel, food, alcohol, tv shows, etc. Especially travel is not a replacement for personality. I can book a flight to Paris if I want tomorrow and have my breakfast over there, and then fly to more than 2-3 exotic places before coming back to work on Monday, and I will still be “meh.” I wish people stopped trying to sell travel as a personality trait. Travel should be an experience to life, not a personality trait to your life.
I feel pressure when I have an ingenious idea for a problem, but it gets so traumatizing inside my head that I say nothing. I think I spend too much time thinking rather than doing some things, although not all the time, it’s still not a good trait. On the other hand, I have a reckless personality to a lot of practical problems I face. Make decisions and then make them right. Life can get dark sometimes; you will be alone most of the time for most reasons as you cannot see eye to eye with almost 99% of the people you meet. I am aware I am too demanding on myself, but hey, I don’t have anyone to be demanding on me. I’ve stopped contemplating where humanity is headed as it can lead to dark roads in my head. Maybe I set my expectations high enough, and then when I do reach them, I wonder why it was so low in the first place. And with all this going on in my head, I prefer to be alone and experience stress on my own time. Well, someone said, “Warriors were supposed to be alone.” On the other hand, I feel I am aware of my flaws and can work on them.
Optimum is having severe internet issues, and my left arm is still broken, FWIW. I hope it fixes itself soon.