Do you fit in? Alone or in clumps it looks like it from here

How much do you need?

Read on . . .

Take a seat in the sky and look down at people on the move. See how they respond when they get physically closer to each other. In Japan they’ll touch. In Texas they’ll stand a foot apart

Yet these are minor differences. The basic process of flowing around each other and occasionally clumping into groups seems to be a mutually understood way that humans transport themselves.

From up here in the sky, in other words, all of humanity appears much the same.

Suspect the visual

For most of us, seeing is believing.

Seeing doesn't always make it clear what you should be believing.

This means that because we all look much the same we can easily fall into a dangerously false assumption: that we actually are all the same.

Even though we’re obviously not all alike, the ‘uniform’ myth can appear to have some validity.

After all, vast industries are founded on it.

Pharmaceutical companies, aeroplane manufacturers, clothing manufacturers, defense contractors all build their offerings around a ‘standard’ human being.

Services such as banking, law, and psychology all structure themselves round the assumption that we want the same things: money, justice, understanding.

Yet we aren’t the same and we don’t want the same things.

Commercial gain, individual loss

These broad brush commercial and political approaches to assessing the human being work within limited objectives.

Seeing humanity as a money tree makes it hard to have a meaningful conversation.

The organizations concerned are not seeking truth but sales.

They are essentially systems for converting the energy of individual need into a more flexible energy: money. They know they can appeal to a big enough chunk of the population to grow year by year. That is the limit of their interest in the human animal.

You and I might see the great mass of population the same way. People with visions of huge consumer empires, such as Rupert Murdoch and Sam Walton, must do.

But seeing ‘us’ this way isn’t going to help you meet the perfect partner and fall in love. Or even help you get to know yourself better.

So take a closer look

Sometimes a man in a red dress is not a soldier.

Generalizing won’t offer guidance in selecting a sports team or even a specific lawyer for a specific task.

Clearly, some human activities cannot be conducted on a global scale.

In close-up, our superficial differences of height, clothing choices, and speed of movement become more significant. The dress on that woman is sending a signal. And (to avoid further accusations of sexism) so does the one on that man.

At a more intimate level, we see a human and its appurtenances. We make a judgement based on past experience. We think we have a workable idea of who s/he is.

And we’re usually wrong.

Who do you think you are?

If the visual/behavioral view of humans was comprehensive it would be easy for the world population to divide itself up into happy like-minded enclaves.

All the men in red dresses would line up here. All the women in black trousers line up over there.

Then subdivide: all the men in red dresses who are soldiers form a group here. Of these, all who abstain from alcohol can group there. Those who don’t smoke either, go there.

Play this game of group-by-category to its conclusion and you end up with one person in each group – and the world goes back to looking a lot like it does today.

What’s this got to do with being gifted?

Gifted individuals have a hard time, as they put it, fitting in.

What's weird about a soldier in a red dress? Meet Corporal Hodge.

Well, trust me, so does a teetotal male soldier in a red dress.

Yet when you see him in his uniform marching along with thousand of other soldiers you’d never know it.

And perhaps when he’s in marching mode he feels as if he’s fitting in just fine.

I think therein lies the lesson for us gifted folk.

The person is not the picture

The point is that the soldier is not a man in a red dress or a man in a uniform. He isn’t anything you can see to judge at all. Not even in his material expression.

He’s just like you and me: a notional space.

As we saw at the start, we each occupy a space. However, this is not just the volume of our body and the air/energy buffer around it. We are more than 8 cubic feet of flesh and bone.

Ours is a notional space that includes ourselves and our perception of our position in the world.

We could call it a sphere of interests.

It is likely to be greater than our sphere of influence.

I think it’s most useful to see it as our sphere of potential. This is where we ‘see’ ourselves operating.

I also believe that if it’s in your sphere, you can do it.

Volume of a space

If this is your natural space, how will you ever squeeze it into a suburban living room?

The volume of this space is directly related to giftedness. It is not measurable by ruler or calibrated beaker.

Instead, it is measurable by topic, or awareness, or understanding.

Go to a party. Listen to the conversations. Strip out any that are specialized because of work relatedness.

Your gifted friend is not the one discussing the quality of the peanuts in the bowl – unless it’s to link them to the spread of aflatoxins in the general population and some garden birds.

The general talk swings from the weather to the need to bring back capital punishment for children under ten.

Meanwhile, the gifted group is having fun exploring the likelihood that blocktime might offer the first credible basis for a scientific proof of astrological predictions.

Or enjoying the way a curtain’s shadow creates a profound feeling of warmth and suggestibility within them.

Unfortunately these things are discussed only within your space because you’re the only gifted person there.

So you’re bored out of your mind – which you’re filling with alcohol or cheese and crackers in a desperate attempt to achieve equanimity within and affinity without.

You’ve resigned yourself to another evening of failure to make contact; more self-condemnation for being inadequate with small talk; more self-hatred for being an alien etc etc.

Why can’t you be like everybody else?

"What on earth did I come for? I knew it would feel like a punishment."

“I’m a bit of a geek,”; “I’m such a nerd,”; “I’m something of an oddball.” and, most of all: “I’ve never really seemed to fit in.”

These are statements I hear all the time. Sadly, they often come in the form of self-condemnation, as if difference were a crime or at least a major societal defect.

In fairness, these words are not often said with conviction. You can tell there’s doubt behind the words, as if the speaker’s really saying: “I don’t actually think I’m a geek but I must be because I don’t know how else to explain how I feel.”

Over-sized sphere of potential

The truth is, of course, that you really don’t fit in.

If you could see the size and shape of your notional space you’d see it filled the room. So either there’s only room for yours or no room for yours.

And your space is you.

So there might as well be a sign saying: “Please leave yourself at the door.”

Having met that request by numbing yourself one way or another, you’re left bereft of anything to say. So your healthy pursuit of social interaction peters out once again.

And you go home kicking yourself for your awkwardness.

What’s to be done?

Our cross-dressing soldier might be able to help.

Can you spot the soldier in the red dress?

His ability to ‘fit in’ with the troops offers a guide to enjoying social interaction without having to poison yourself with ‘comforting’ substances or just sitting abjectly in the corner.

Before heading anywhere social:

• Start by calling up that wonderful resource: your giftedness;
• Envision yourself, not as free to roam the full extent of your space but as a soldier, temporarily subject to external and limiting regulation;
• Think about where you’re going, its nature, its awareness level;
• Ask what you want from it (this deserves a book in itself but if you have a clear idea where you’re headed you won’t expect too much) ;
• Strategize and stay focused on your goal.

In other words, instead of trying to fit the whole of your space into a room too small for it, select a subset of space relevant to your environment and use it to its full.

"I've always been fascinated with human sensitivity. Can you feel this?"

Or you might conduct a survey in such a way that your respondents are unaware of your intent but flattered by your attention.

Basically, it’s all about lowering your expectations. You are rare, so the chances of finding a soulmate are few. However, if you simply want to feel like an acceptable part of the human race, you can bring that about.

How to mess up

As in all things, it’s wise to take care.

When I set out to a gathering with the intention of feeling popular, or being loved or important, I almost invariably screw up.

"Let me delight you with my new invention! . . . Please!!"

As I head home afterwards I kick myself for being such a conversation hog, for being so insensitive, for forgetting my own instructions to myself.

It usually happens when I’m most anxious about the gathering in question.

However, when I go with the intention of making others feel good about themselves it’s a different story. I enjoy seeing them relaxing into a warm sense of their own lovability.

I may even have the fun of having them flirt with me.

And I go home – often quite early – with a warm feeling derived from the pleasure I’ve absorbed from others’ enjoyment of my words.

Job done. Reward received.

In conclusion

Know your space. Know the volume of potential you occupy in the world.

Then operate from a subset of that space depending on your immediate social environment. Make your choice of subset conscious, or you will feel distressed.

"When it comes to long-term relationships I insist on finding an exact match for all my space."

It will probably be hard to find a like-sphered partner but it is essential – in love or in work – for ongoing happiness and growth.

And if you ever find yourself in a room – or even a virtual ‘space’ – with a gifted equal you will discover that rooms have no walls and that the virtual can be real.

Go seek!

Could it be that giftedeness needs another dimension to free its joy?

We are intense. We are obsessive. Our work ethic can make us dismissive of others.

Especially others whose casual ease with luxury can seem a moral insult.

Yet by denying ourselves the same ease we also deny ourselves some access to love and perhaps to the full extent of our potential.

How? I suspect that to achieve the profound connection and love we deserve, we must learn to embrace luxury. To indulge ourselves. To seek ease, comfort, and the benefits of riches.

Open to everything – including love

I am so conditioned into believing that personal denial is the only path to truth that it was almost impossible for me to write: “benefits of riches”.

But I don’t trust the message of my own conditioning. It doesn’t ring true.

So I’m going to suggest that every gifted person needs to discover the benefits of luxury.

And hopefully I’ll convince myself at the same time . . .

Excess is essential

Here’s a bit of autobiography. It helps explain my early conditioning around luxury. It may have echoes for you, even if in different ways at different times.

I was born in the UK, just after WWII when shortages were at their peak.

Not a label from a jail uniform but approved Civilian Clothing 1941

The world I entered was marked by rationing, the utility label and – more importantly – the moral ethos such things evoked.

It was definitely ‘good’ to do without and to make the most of what you had. Every self-sacrifice benefited society and honored those who had died or been wounded.

It was therefore definitely ‘bad’ to be self-indulgent. Especially when so many of the wealthy were identified as having profited from the deaths and the shortages of war.

There is a corollary today in the thousands of lives that have been ruined by the actions of the banks and the governments that support them.

Moral puff-ball

I find it almost impossible not to be self-righteous about all this.

"If it weren't for my moral superiority you'd think I was just a silly bird."

The puffed-up moral judge inside me declares: “THEY did it. THEY are the evil men.” and points to the generals, the politicians, the bankers, the black marketeers. Or to the women who proudly set them on their ‘evil’ paths.

All the people who apparently profit from the suffering inherent in vast human tragedies.

But the reality is so much harder to accept: that death and suffering from war and depression are caused by ignorance, by fear, by the ubiquitous limitations of human nature.

And we’re all in that soup together.

So there are no evil people. Or good ones. There are just people.

Despite my knee-jerk need to deny it, luxury is not a moral issue but an interesting behavioral phenomenon. And the fact that it exists suggests to me that we need it.

Giftedness is all about being excessive

Luxury and giftedness have one thing very much in common. They both appear excessive to the mainstream of society.

• Gifted individuals push whatever they are doing to the limit.
• They don’t see the point of just going for a run: their exercise has to fit into a planned training program.
• They can’t just stand at a party discussing bling. They have to be recruiting for their campaign to save something that others haven’t even noticed yet.
• They can’t just buy something – it has to be the right thing. They have little tolerance for a half-measure solution, knowing that it will just irritate on a daily basis. They’d rather go without.

A quick scan of my etymological dictionary tells me that luxury has its root in luxuria, meaning excess.

"You bad, bad tree! Won't you ever learn enough is enough?"

And that’s certainly the sense in which ‘luxury’ is usually used.

It basically implies something more than is needed.

But I ask: says whom? Who is the great assessor of who needs what?

I haven’t bothered to check but I wouldn’t mind betting that the first people to ‘discover’ that you’d be better off poor were the religious leaders.

“They say: “Send your money to the Lord”/ But they give you their address.” as Hank Williams Jnr sang so profoundly.

And it’s a rich tradition to try to buy your way into Heaven. Or at least to hedge your bets by sending a donation to the Pope or some similar after-life insurance broker.

Who needs things?

The close alignment between fear and wealth has been explicitly recognized at least since the Buddha took to the road.

Yet the trappings of the wealthy – and sometimes their means of acquiring wealth – can leave them outside the circle of sympathy that we readily apply to the less materially fortunate.

“What’s s/he got to worry about?” we ask. And: “We’re all miserable but at least s/he’s rich.”

As if it made any difference.

Pain is pain. Fear is fear. Death is the end.

And they all bypass the means test.

"Come on Chanel! At $261,000 you ought to include the pooch."

So if you need to carry a pedigree puppy in a £6,000.00 handbag in order to stave off the terrors, that’s fine by me.

And if you, you gifted ascetic, need to wear a wealth-rejecting hair shirt to stave off your own terrors that’s fine, too.

But I think there’s a better solution for both:

Embrace luxury, discover love.

Trust replaces hurt

The rich person – especially the inheritor of wealth – has a hard time learning to trust love.

It’s not just that s/he attracts gold-diggers. It’s because the daily privileging of external objects over internal ones leaves him or her untrained in matters of emotion.

The gifted person – especially the one whose sensitivity and idealism have led them into many painful encounters – also has a hard time learning to trust love.

Gifted individuals have a set of expectations – logical enough in their way – that the objects of their love rarely reciprocate.

And the gifted also mistrust their own attraction to wealth because they are so unfamiliar with managing its seductions.

After all, you fear, if you were really really rich, just think of all those books you’d buy. Far more than you could ever read. Just like those hundreds of pairs of shoes that Trust-fund Trudy will never wear.

Barricades against the banshees

So where am I going with all this? To this:

Whether gifted with wealth or giftedness, start seeing luxury not as something shameful and excessive but as a natural outcropping of a particular natural climate.

Zug's climate and gold ethos make it the rain-forest for billionaires.

Luxuriant growth is simply profuse growth, whether we’re talking rain-forest shrubs or Zug billionaires.

Gifted people are all about profuse growth – of knowledge, of talent, of human understanding, and even, sometimes, of material wealth.

The ‘particular natural climate’ that promotes profuse vegetation growth tends to be a bit extreme and excessive when measured against climatic norms.

And the ‘particular natural climate’ that promotes the growth of gifted humans is a complex mix in which we, as individuals, play only a small part.

So trust your luxurious urges. They’re totally natural.

Surrender to your desires

Virgil, an acute observer of human nature, wrote:

“Trahit sua quemque voluptas.” Broadly, “Everyone is drawn on by their own longing.”

So if you wish to be drawn on, to develop your potential to the utmost, you most open yourself to your longing.

This means ALL your longing(s). Not just the bits you regard as morally superior.

Trust the process

It’s safer than you might think.

If your heart be reasonably pure your longings will be reasonably constructive, even if they come under the heading of ‘wicked indulgence’ in your internalized Book of Judgments.

Also, the outcome of allowing your longings will be reasonably constructive even if, at the outset, you have no idea that there will even be an outcome.

Look:

Archimedes took a bath and discovered what made us float.

"Eureka" indeed. Afloat, of course.

I don’t know whether the bath was a luxurious jacuzzi but it might well have been. Without that indulgence we’d have no “Eureka!” moments – and ships might sink.

Robert Louis Stevenson neglected the family orange plantation while he sat under a tree and imagined – “Treasure Island”.

Isaac Newton did the same in an apple orchard and came up with gravity. (Or should that be down?)

Christian Dior said “Poof!” to post-war fabric restrictions and came up with the New Look and a whole new industry and art form.

Not just material luxury

I want to urge you (and me) to seize your excess and see what comes of it.

"I've embraced luxury, but I'm still taking the 'bus."

There are many who find it hard to permit themselves to indulge their material fantasies while there are so many in the world living below the poverty level.

There’s probably no connection between the two things but guilt isn’t rational.

First, therefore, seek to negate that irrational guilt.

If that fails, look to indulge yourself in forms of luxury that don’t trigger guilt. For example:

• Give yourself some time.
• Take in that exhibit that you glimpse as you hurry past on your way to work every morning.
• Give yourself the effort to find a parking place so you can take a walk in the park.
• Take two minutes longer in the shower so you can really reward yourself for your efforts in the gym.
• Pay a bit more for that shirt or top so its feel and fabric will remind you every time you wear it what a special person you are – and what a joy it can be to be simply human.

And on the subject of clothes, cut those scratchy labels out. Their cheapness and nastiness only serves as an uncomfortable reminder that you could be the unwitting beneficiary of some sweatshop in China.

• Open yourself to luxury because luxury begets creativity.

Even fierce Ludwig could see it:

“Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.”

Surely, if indulgence was good enough for Beethoven it must be justifiable and valuable for the rest of us?

And finally . . .

Despite all the above, do you still think Lack is Virtue?

The enduring interdependence of luxury and art: the Queen's collection

If so, don’t be hard on yourself. There is such a long tradition of the virtues of asceticism that we can be forgiven for believing ourselves to be better off by being worse off.

By denying ourselves the rewards of luxury, the thinking goes, we are contributing to the forces of truth and probably helping to save the planet at the same time.

But . . . no wealthy, indulgent patron means no truth, no art.

Just ask Michaelangelo da Vinci.

You never heard of him?

Precisely!

Now I’m off to indulge myself, repeating:

• Luxury is nutritious; luxury is good;
• Luxury is natural; luxury is good;
• Luxury is fruitful; luxury is good;
• Luxury is gifted’s twin; luxury is good.

Luxuriate!

“Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.” — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The truth of Mrs Stanton’s words is self-evident. And yet:

• all education systems are designed to foster conformity;
• all governments seek to regiment all lives into a single, multiply-cloned, life;
• the ‘tribe’ demands compliance with its ethics and at least a pretended respect for its rituals.

In other words, the fear of the qualities that make us unique as individual humans constantly overrides our most valuable asset:

• Our variety and uniqueness in relation to each other.

What’s to fear?

Are you afraid to be different? Or more accurately, are you afraid to reveal your inevitable difference?

In a world where children can be scorned for wearing the ‘wrong’ brand of jeans no-one can be blamed for putting on the cloak of conformity.

Many find it very comforting. Being a willing and obedient member of the group carries tremendous rewards, especially if the requirements of the group aren’t seriously at odds with one’s own uniqueness.

However, this is often not the case, especially for those blessed with gifted integrity. We frequently find our needs at odds with the needs of those around us.

If we try to dismiss our needs in the cause of conformity, then inner conflict gives rise to ‘sickness’. This manifests as unfulfilled potential, actual physical ailments, and psychological distortions such as addictions and compulsions.

All in the interest of avoiding being who and what we really are.

It’s not just accounting

We tend to think of conformity as an establishment thing: accountants are conformists but artists aren’t. Yet that is not a true picture.

Any group that can be described as “a segment of society” comes with its own set of expections and societal assumptions.

Artists aren’t expected (or allowed?) to put on suits and neckties before approaching their easels. (Though Matisse got pretty close.)

It’s less prevalent now, but at one time any group photograph of psychotherapists showed a disproportionate number of beards, Freudian and otherwise.

The rules of clan membership have always included wearing the requisite tartan.

The penalty for difference is harsh

On the CNN news this morning there was a brief story about a young man who’d been forced to stand out in the street with a large sign around his neck reading:

“I don’t behave well in school. If I continue I’ll end up working hard for little money.”

There is a major warning here for gifted children, a huge number of whom end up in special classes because of their ‘bad’ behavior.

Setting aside the abusive nature of this humiliating treatment, the sign exemplifies a great deal of society’s beliefs around conformity:

• It’s the pupil’s fault (not a failure of parenting or schooling) if s/he doesn’t conform to the required form of behavior;
• It’s the people in power who define ‘good’ behavior (“The golden rule is: it’s the ones who have the gold who make the rules.”);
• The pupil will ultimately be punished by having to work hard in unrewarding labor;
• S/he will be rewarded for conforming (the implication is) by being well paid without working hard.

Which exactly explains what’s wrong with the economy today!

The well-off, by and large, tend to come from the ‘going along to get along’ brigade rather than from those who challenge the status quo and produce creative breakthroughs that change the world.

When everybody’s busy scratching everybody else’s back, who’s going to create the wealth?

However, the reality is that difference of a certain kind is a punishable offence. So maybe we should fear our uniqueness.

Even though the fear is justified

As spiritual teacher Andrew Schneider says: “We are afraid of being ourselves. We are afraid of being unique and different. We are afraid of being individually powerful, and even successful. “

“We want approval from others. We want to be accepted and popular. We seek this comfort to overcome our fear and feel more secure. …So, at times when we conform, we don’t feel the fear of living.”

Schneider accurately summarizes the feeling. Yet I’d suggest that it’s just at this moment – when we are ‘securely’ and fearlessly conforming to a societal blueprint – that we are at greatest risk. Why? Because we’re walking an inauthentic path.

If we should take one step off that path – or get pushed by circumstance – we’ll find ourselves mired and maybe drowned in an environment so alien that our very survival will be threatened.

If you don’t believe me, just look at the hordes of celebrities and other rich and famous people who die before their time in a morass of drugs, debaucheries and other actings out.

They paid the price of trying to be too pleasing to too many.

It’s weird to think of James Dean, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, and all the other dead rock and movie stars as the ultimate conformists but that’s exactly what they were.

Perhaps Rolling Stone Keith Richards put it most succinctly when he said: “I’m like this so you don’t have to be.”

Thanks Keith, for doing it to please all of us. You are the ultimate conformist to society’s requirement for the archetypal rock musician. I wonder who you really are?

Overcoming the fear of being ourselves

Some of us live a compromise for a long time. We try to combine a dependent societal life – be a good employee, for example – with an independent personal life. This ‘independence’ might show in the form of dangerous sporting activities, weekend role-playing or unusual modes of sexual behavior.

However, splitting our lives into parts rather than integrating them is not going to lead to success. We can’t have a sense of adventure, discovery, and enthusiasm for life – but only at weekends.

So how do we overcome the fear of our own difference?

Happily, by recognizing that if success is going to be ours, it will only be through being ourselves.

This may seen counter-intuitive. After all, one oft-recommended technique for achieving success is to copy the behavior of successful people.

Unfortunately, that technique usually doesn’t work.

Successful people are successful because of who they are, not because of what they do. They do not follow a set of “rules for success.”.

Rather, they trust themselves and do what they are compelled to do at the moment they are compelled to act.

This does mean that success can look like a bit of a moving target. After all,

• There’s no single “right” way to accomplish anything.
• What works for some people, won’t necessarily work for others.
• And what is effective today, won’t necessarily be effective tomorrow.

But that’s OK because one person’s idea of success is different from another’s. So if we each follow our own unique success path, we’re sure to arrive there.

Personal differences determine success

We all know successful people. Some are entrepreneurs, some are schoolteachers, some are writers, some are soldiers.

If they exhibit one quality in common it is that they reserve some part of themselves to themselves. It’s a subtle form of asserting: “I’m OK. I’m as I should be.”

It doesn’t mean they don’t have moments of yearning for someone else’s life.

It does mean that they won’t bend themselves out of shape in order to be acceptable to you or me.

If they get on with us, that’s great. If not, they say: “It’s been a pleasure, goodbye.”

This is not dismissal but a respecting of difference that is free both of craving and contempt.

I may not want to be a Miles Gloriosus, proclaiming: “I . . . am a parade!” but neither do I begrudge him the rewards of his calling.

If I were to respond in any other way I would be asserting – implicitly or explicitly – that “the only way to live and be successful is the way I’ve lived and have become successful.”

In fact, it’s highly likely that that would be a recipe for disaster for everybody but me.

Learn from triumph in battle

Military history is a great teacher because the results of acting out human dynamics on this scale are so clear cut.

Sadly, the military and the people they advise seem to be the last to discover this!

However, war teaches us to a greater extent than anything else that the cost of unthinkingly following someone else’s ideas leads straight to defeat.

Thus the WWI followers of Napoleonic “go for it” strategy threw hundreds of thousands of men to death in battle against the trench, the barbed wire and the machine guns that Napoleon never had to face.

Then in WWII the French, having learnt the power of the trench, followed that idea and put their faith in the defensive Maginot line. So all the Germans had to do was fly above and walk right round it.

Please take heed: what worked for your grandma, your grandpa and your parents is not going to work for you.

You have to do it differently even if it annoys them beyond distraction.

Even if it costs you your inheritance.

Your own path is your only path

So now life is easy.

If you’re a business person, don’t copy Jack Welch or Steve Jobs. Do it your way.

If you’re a homemaker, don’t copy Nigella Lawson or her male equivalent. Do it your way.

If you’re a sinner or a saint, an artist or a banker – do it your way.

Then you will always be a success. A triumphant you.

What do I do next?

The fundamental principle that underpins all of this is to trust yourself.

I don’t mean trust yourself because you’ve been a good student and thought a lot and never want to hurt anything, especially dolphins.

I mean trust whatever comes into your motivation.

Trust yourself to be the pure force of universal good that you were designed to be.

And don’t second-guess the universe. You can be a ‘bad’ person in society but a ‘good’ one in the universe. Don’t let ‘them’ tell you you should be other than you are.

I know gifted people who are destroying themselves as they seek to shine as protectors of society – lawyers, firefighters, doctors. It makes them feel good and they’re helping people but – they’re denying themselves.

I’m not convinced that healthy results can come from unhealthful motivation. Sooner or later, karma seems to come around and deposit her poisoned gems.

So I urge you, be self-directed.

Recognize that service to yourself is service to the world.

How do I know?

Because that’s what the universe put you here to do.

That’s the universe. The Universe. The 13 billion year-old behemoth that we don’t understand hardly at all.

Not your parents.

Not your schoolteachers.

Not your neighbors.

Not your spouse.

Not your friends.

Not your priest, vicar, mullah.

Not your therapist.

The Universe is the only one that knows what it needs and it created you exactly as you are. So it’s a shoe-in that you’re exactly what’s needed.

And, even more strangely (from where I sit) it means I’M exactly what’s needed.

Spooky!

"Do we have a message for you?!"

I’ve been jumpy and unable to concentrate, constantly looking over my metaphorical shoulder to see if I’ve overlooked something more important and urgent than attending to these words.

Yet I can’t see anything there beyond a gathered phalanx of self-destructive messages:

“Who do you think you are?”; “Stop trying to be so clever!”; “What makes you so special?”; “What right do you have to pontificate?”.

This experience does seem rather personal but I don’t imagine it’s unique to me. Its insistence tells me it must be what I’m required to address.

What follows is a mixture of fantasy and reality but I hope it’s interesting and useful nevertheless.

The source of self-condemnation

The root of those dismissive messages is not hard to find. Just recently a revered family figure responded to a thoughtful remark of mine by dismissing it to the assembled gathering: “Don’t take any notice. It’s only Christopher.”

And so it is . . .

And only Christopher has his complement in only Jason, only William, and only Andrew; in only Susan, only Sarah and only Britney.

And it’s no coincidence that ‘only’ rhymes with ‘lonely’. There are many lonely gifted people, absent-mindedly kept at arm’s length by the society they strive to subscribe to and support.

Down the street

As I write, my mind offers up a visualization of my inner experience of being haunted by these messages.

I’m in a terraced street, narrowly enclosed by nineteenth-century red-brick and rigid sensibility.

It’s the kind of street that led to these words from William Blake:

"My way or the highway."

“I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

“In every cry of every man,
In every infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear.”

Yes, ‘Blake’ is an anagram of ‘Bleak’.

I am being driven out of this street by thousands of contemptuous words. The letters race at me, jeer at me. Sentences form and chase me, teasing me as if in a cartoon.

Feeling hurt and betrayed, I see I’ve been marked as a foreign body, an intruder. I try to explain but already I know the assaultive words are in service to the society of the street. I must be expelled to maintain the homogeneity of the larger society ‘they’ call ‘us’.

“You’re not one of us!”  The words are never said but fill the air as I’m pushed from the street. I feel the pain of separation but it’s not my connections I’m being parted from. It’s my efforts at forming connections, my struggle to fit in.

 I never really belonged. These houses were built for those who fit.

And I am unfit.

The imagery fades, its point made. But I can’t stop thinking . . .

It hurts, this virtual exile, but my gifted nature compels me to see through the pain so as to make sense of the experience. It’s odd. I’m being kicked out but I don’t feel like a victim. It’s as if I’ve been given my freedom.

The mutual pursuit of authenticity

"Don't worry! We're leaving! We're destined to taste knowledge rather than live under your protective ignorance!"

Suddenly I see I owe a debt of gratitude to that persistent stream of incomprehension and dismissive disinterest.

By driving me away it protects me from work which, though honorable, I am not suited for. It defends me against relationships doomed to failure. It contains a certain knowledge of the universal benefit of rejecting that which is incompatible.

The fact that the messages are sharp and I experience pain is just a designed-in feature of human nature. It’s a quality that ensures that variations will be forced out into the open.

There they will either thrive or die but at least they will do their part.

We’re always ready to settle for a little comfort so it takes a lot of pain to move us. Especially when the future is unknown. It’s not as if there’s a guarantee of a place where “only Christopher” or “only” anyone else will feel as if they belong.

Nevertheless, we do belong. In the universe, on this planet, at this time. We are that special – and no more.

Just like you.

Your experience of ‘only-ness’ will be different from mine.

Perhaps you were accused of: “Doing a Jonathan” or: “Just being Gemma”.

Possibly your mother said: “Paralegal” every time you said: “Artist”.

Maybe you were condemned as “fresh” or “above yourself”.

"How come the other ducks can't see how beautiful I am?"

The variations are endless. But the message is the same as to the Ugly Duckling:

“Quack! Quack! Get out!
Quack! Quack! Get out!
Quack! Quack! Get out of town!”

Do yourself a favor. Hear the rejecting quacks and don’t try to distort yourself into being a duck just so you can stay.

Better for everybody to be a lonely swan on the lake than a scorned mallard wannabe in a miserable puddle in the gutter.

And it might just turn out to be better than you think . . .

See you at the swannery!

"There are more of us than you may realize!"

The parable of the sower has particular relevance for gifted adults because it highlights the vital – as in genuinely life-maintaining – importance of our environment.

"Then you ask why I don't live here? Honey, how come you don't move?" Bob Dylan "On the road again"

Gifted individuals have a great capacity for the state of what I call “easy survival” but we can find it very hard to thrive in a way that gives us a complete sense of fulfillment.

We typically blame ourselves for this. However, it is not necessarily due to our shortcomings as humans but may simply arise from the lack of resources around us.

Here’s the parable, via Wikipedia:

“Behold, there went out a sower to sow:

And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up.

And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.

And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.

And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some a hundred.

And he said unto them, He that has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Isn’t that beautiful? “And some fell upon good ground, and did yield fruit . . . ”

Yielding your own precious fruit

Compared to us, a seed is a relatively simple life form. It may have a spirit but its resources for life fulfillment are basically limited by the skill of the sower.

Anatomy is destiny

We, however, are a different kettle of fish. We have all kinds of resources so that even if our sowers were less than mediocre, we have some capacity for improving the soil we landed on and also for moving to “good ground”.

This capacity is not absolute. We are constrained by the facts of our birth – Freud’s declaration that “Anatomy is destiny” is a valid rule of thumb – and determining what constitutes “good ground” is a massive challenge in itself.

Three-in-one

The challenge of finding the right environment is hugely complicated by our existence as biopsychospiritual entities. It means that a diet of phosphates, sun and water are hopelessly inadequate to our needs. To thrive, we must have access to at least three categories of ‘nutrient’ within our surroundings: physical, intellectual and emotional sustenance.

We could add a spiritual dimension to that. However, it seems to me that our connection to the universe is with us wherever we go so it’s not significant for this discussion of a more material ‘ground’.

In addition to needing three categories of nutrient we also, compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, place massive demands on our nutritional resources.

Again, the more gifted we are, the more demand we place on the available nutrients. Just as gifted athletes require more than average food, training facilities, time and sponsorship to thrive, so those gifted in other ways make their own special demands on their surroundings.

Virtually there

A worldwide web of enrichment or deception?

A major question lies open for me, having to do with the Internet and access to the world wide web. It can make an otherwise empty life seem tolerable and offers many rewarding paths lined with the kinds of ‘berries’ that gifted adults seek and feed off on their explorations.

I am concerned, though, that it may be a chimera: that its branches may hold false fruit in that they pacify our immediate restlessness without our being forced into action. It’s another variation on the old ‘golden handcuffs’ syndrome of working for a company whose reward system is just enough to keep you from leaving to discover something better.

Feed on . . .

I shall be taking a closer look at different aspects of gifted nutrition in future posts. I hope this one may have started you thinking and would love to hear your own ideas about what nourishes you and what looks good but ultimately tastes of cardboard.

Referring to the parable, who or what are your “fowls of the air”, your stony ground, your thorns or your good ground . . . ? Let us know.

“The Gifted Way” covers the same kinds of topics as “Dynamic Living”, but in a more spontaneous and light-hearted way. I suppose it’s actually more dynamic.

Too stuck to change, so with sorrow I say: "Goodbye, not-so-Dynamic Living™"

Many of you discovered that the effort of creating a new ezine each month eventually proved too demanding a task for this sole practitioner.

I’ve now adopted a more sustainable format – the blog – and tested it for a couple of months to be sure I can maintain it. I don’t want to let you down again.

I hope you’ll take a look at it, scan some of the posts from months past, and decide to stay with it. I’m also adding the archive of “Dynamic Living” articles.

What to do next

If you wish to continue to receive notifications of new posts to “The Gifted Way” you need do nothing. They will come to you automatically.

If you wish to stop your notifications, click on the “Get email alerts” link at the top of this page, enter the email address you’re ‘alerted’ under, and click on “Unsubscribe”. That applies if you have a duplicate email address, too.

If you wish to change your email alert address I regret to say that you’ll have to first unsubscribe and then resubscribe with your new email address. Clumsy but effective. Go to the same “Get email alerts” link at the top of the page.

Interactive communication

I’d like to acknowledge the fact that this path of adopting an interactive blog format was first suggested to me several years ago by Toronto-based creativity coach (and much else beside) Carol McBride.

I looked into the idea but I couldn’t see how to go about it. The technology was too challenging, making it difficult to create a visually-appealing blog.

Also, my decades of working in many forms of the printed word had left me with an internalized communications structure that didn’t transpose easily into the less formal blog structure. And I wasn’t dynamic enough to adapt.

Three things have happened since then:

• The technology has radically improved, making the whole process much simpler to implement.
• 

  Casting bread on the waters for the gathering ugly ducklings

  I’ve learnt to let go and trust the universe rather than feeling I had to produce something of a certain length, in a certain way, at a certain time so as to please those critical creatures that on some level I thought “my readers” to be.

• Like Ecclesiastes, I’ve discovered that casting our bread on the waters really does work. Honorable efforts elicit honorable responses. And “my readers” are actually “my collaborators” in our efforts to improve our lives for ourselves and others.

I hope you’ll enjoy the new format and that you’ll pass the word around. To tell your friends about it, click on the: “Tell Your Friends” link [duh!] at the top of every page and send them a link.

And please feel free to comment on the posts. It makes the process more interactive and increases the value for everyone.

Don't be fooled by first glances. What might look furious can be the path to glorious harmony.

One of them has already been published as a post but the other two are new. They are:

• Have you hugged your anger today?
  * Find out why recognizing and accepting your anger can be a major help in life: and how to achieve it.
• Know (and love) your Type
  * Why it’s important to know your psychological type – and how to.
• Turning  frustration into harmonious co-existence
  * Discover how to turn times of conflict into opportunities for creative development.

You’ll find the new articles by clicking here or on the “Dynamic Living Archive” tag at the head of the page.

I hope they’ll resonate with the unique tone of your own inner music.

A triumph of collaboration: pork tenderloin with chocolate beef cream broth.

That means that once again these are much longer than typical posts and cover these topics:

• Prorexia: a cure for a jaded appetite for life.
• How to maintain your autonomy in a collaborative partnership.
• How effective a collaborator are you?

The articles on collaboration have a link to a PDF containing the test forms described in “How effective a collaborator are you?”. You can download the PDF and copy it as many times as you like, using it to test your friends, family and work colleagues.

You’ll find the new articles by clicking here or on the “Dynamic Living Archive” tag at the head of the page.

I hope you find them tasty and easily digestible.

Those words by Alexander Pope were published in 1734. They are part of a poem whose psychological and philosophical content anticipates contemporary ideas of human nature so comprehensively that in some ways it seems extraordinary that we haven’t made greater progress.

However, despite the joy it’s possible to take in his genius, I’m not here to eulogize Mr Pope. Instead, I want to expand the notion that: “The  proper study of mankind is man”, into: “Every (wo)man’s purpose on earth is to gather information about being human.”

And nothing more.

No less human than you or me?

In this model of life we are flesh-and-blood discovery vehicles. Similar to the Mars Spirit explorer vehicle but infinitely more-sophisticated. Like the mechanical explorer we are dropped into strange territory and proceed to move around gathering information.

And, still like the explorer, we pass our information on. Through example, word, action and technology we communicate with other humans and contribute to the collective knowledge pool.

To what end?

Good question. But who knows? We could ask the ants, who do the same sorts of things that we do (but with pheronomes instead of the Internet) and at 130 million years have been around a lot longer. But I don’t think they can know, either.

It sounds a bit bland, but the answer’s probably: “Survival of the species”, or: “Because that’s what we do”.

In some ways it seems sad that we can never know what the universe intended us for or even if there was an intention. On the other hand, it is tremendously liberating. It means we can feel free to do whatever we want.

So even if we are just fulfilling our universal purpose of – say – destroying the ecology of this planet, we can at least have some sense of autonomy as we go about it.

OK, Chris, but – er – so what?

What’s the practical application of this kind of musing? It enables a shift in an internal state from helpless fretting inadequacy to a knowledge and acceptance of our total value.

"If I focus my aim intently, I'll score a bulls-eye with my pen." A. Pope

It means we can do whatever we are doing whole-heartedly. We don’t have to be constantly second-guessing ourselves in a futile endeavor to “do the right thing”.

After all,  if we don’t know what we’re here for we can have no idea what is ultimately useful to do or know. Everything we learn is passed on to the rest of humanity and all knowledge is of equal value as far as the species is concerned. Just ask Wikipedia.

This is of particular significance to ourselves because, of course, the community of gifted and creative individuals is in the vanguard of data collection. It also leads in the development of ways of expressing and communicating that data.

Let A. Pope have the last word

Finally, if the idea that we’re just a vast army of data sensors is true, then Pope was correct when he wrote in the same poem:

“Whate’er the passion — knowledge, fame or pelf –
Not one will change his neighbour with himself. ”

. . . because it wouldn’t be in the interests of the species to have everyone seeing the same thing and reacting to it in the same way.

I’ll try to remember that the next time I try to “encourage” my child, mother, teacher, or client to “behave properly.”

These articles tend to be much longer than typical posts and cover these topics:

The compelling power of "Dynamic Living" as portrayed by John Singer Sargent.

• What is Dynamic Living?
• Issues for Gifted Adults (By D. Lovecky Ph.D.)
• Profiting from your own intelligence system.
• Is there such a thing as a Geographical Cure?
• Love: a practical understanding, and
• Love yourself and grow powerful.

You’ll find them by clicking here or on the “Dynamic Living Archive” tag at the head of the page.

Happy reading!