“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” ~Albert Einstein
Most people find it hard to believe that everyone is gifted, only IQ measures how clever we really are, and our potential success in school and career depends on that IQ number. The fact is, all of us are gifted but in different ways. Einstein said that too.
You can turn some of us upside down and we still can see things right-side up, but we cannot read as fast and we see things differently. They call us dyslexic, and to think that Leonardo da Vinci was like that.
Some of us have supersonic sensual abilities and sensitive in hearing, sight, smell and touch, and can detect 10 different musical instrument parts in a piece, taste and smell 5 different ingredients in a dish, or sense the motions of things around us.
It is therefore hard to sit in a normal school setting since everything is heightened and it becomes hard to function, so they say we have sensory integration disorder, and order us to go for therapies. In that case, Mozart and Gordon Ramsey would have to go for therapies too if they were born in this generation.
Some of us love to study the links between unrelated things, the mosquitoes and a tsunami, sand and glass, then we ask too many questions and are irrelevant. Just like Einstein who was not accepted in schools and thought to be stupid.
Since we have a passion for simple topics and study them to the ends, we are aspergers or autistic. Then, most professors in universities are aspergers since they are experts in only very few topics.
If we were to measure people by just how the schools measure us, then most gifted are ignored and have to grow up thinking we are stupid (I did).
Academic achievements, standardized and IQ tests cannot be the only means to measure even our own kids. So if you think or were told your child has a disability, then think again.
In many occasions, I was told my children have disabilities, but I chose to think otherwise. Instead, I went to look deep into their capabilities, focus on developing their self-esteems and motivate them find their dreams and their passions, because going by a standard measurement, they would be failures.
Interestingly, when they’ve found their passions, and when they have good self-esteems, they even fair well in standardized tests, which is a bonus.
Decades after Einstein, Howard Gardner’s research on multiple intelligence went on to attract attention from educators and psychologists the world over. He too believe there are many kinds of intelligence in people. He is still actively researching into this area at Harvard University today.
If we are given a fish, instead of forcing our fish to climb a tree, let’s encourage our fish to swim its best, I’m glad his mother and his coach overlooked the ADHD and saw the fish in Michael Phelps.
