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!

"Each day I see my giftedness more clearly reflected before me."

In itself this is not too much of a surprise. Many clients react to the realization of their giftedness in the same way I did: initial relief, often accompanied by tears, is followed by a dismissive shake of the head and a state of defiant skepticism.

However, for most clients, initial rejection dissolves in the face of reality as their life events and responses consistently mirror the criteria for giftedness so aptly identified by other writers.

For others, however, acceptance seems impossible. “Don’t call me gifted!” they cry, as if threatened by the label.

And it seems to be the women who resist harder than the men.

Real women aren’t gifted

I find it hard to write: “I am a gifted man.” It feels like an invitation to be scorned and dismissed. “Real men aren’t gifted,” says the distorted logic inside me, “so if I’m gifted I’m not a real man”.

In the same way, it seems, gifted women are not real women.

How come? Presumably it’s because “gifted” is a label that, unlike “helpful” or “neighborly”, is perceived in a negative way.

So who might object to a gifted woman? Here is a list of possible culprits:

"Don't cry darling. You can forget those nasty books and be just like mommy now."

• Mother. Not only is her daughter a younger and prettier version of herself, but if she’s gifted she’s special in other ways too. Any mother-daughter competitiveness will swing into action around this one.
• Father. The man who says: “I want her to have the best education available.” is the same one who later says: “I’m your father and I don’t have to listen to your darn fool ideas.”
• Female friends. Women in groups can be brutal in discouraging difference. The need for affiliation has quenched many a woman’s acknowledgment of her giftedness. It doesn’t do to break ranks with the sisterhood.
• Male friends and would-be mates. Heterosexual women still seem to be largely convinced that they need a man to complete them as human beings. The male of the species is not renowned for his embrace of female superiority – other than sometimes in fantasy – so the man-needing woman keeps her enhanced sensibilities and giftedness firmly under wraps.
• Everybody else. Gifted people can be pretty high maintenance. We constantly (and often unconsciously) challenge the prevailing comfortable mood. We are emotionally intense. We are highly sensitive – to physical phenomena as well as human ones.

Given such a comprehensive list of potential offendees, why wouldn’t a girl prefer a J-Lo butt to being gifted?

Maybe the reasons start here:

An imbalance of power

Giftedness is power.

One of the most intriguing statistics in “A Woman’s Nation,” a recently released survey by Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress, is this: 69% of women think men resent women who have more power than they do. Only 49% of men agree.

Don't recognize yourself? The distorted visions of frightened inner males are not the truth about you.

My personal hunch – based on decades of observing people in the corporate workplace as well as my work as therapist and coach – is that the women are probably right and the men have a hard time admitting it.

To the small boy inside every man, a powerful woman carries the threatening demeanor of a posing body-builder. It’s true that not every man is dominated by his inner small boy. However, a good many are and, in the turmoil of inner male voices, the small boy always makes his contribution.

Forbes magazine recently asked a few from its list of the 100 Most Influential Women in the World for their personal reflections on power. Here are some of their responses [together with some examples of threatened inner-male reactions]:

• “Power is the ability to create change in the world” - Tensie Whelan, Executive Director, Rainforest Alliance [Oh my God! Napoleonic ambition! Worldwide change! And rainforests are only good for turning into superyachts anyway!]

• Power is not being tied to any person or any thing. “If a deal or a relationship does not make sense, I can walk.” – Lynn Tilton, CEO, Patriarch Partners [She can walk?! Leave me? I know - I'll get her pregnant and economically dependent  and then she won't be going anywhere!]
• “Power is one’s ability to inspire positive change…to impact the global village.” – Tina Sharkey, Chairman [sic] and Global President, BabyCenter [Complete male-terror. New-age globalization combined with baby expertise.]
• Power is confronting “the demons that prevent us as human beings from living up to our full potential.” – Cheryl Dorsey, MD, President, Echoing Green [Demons? The only demon is a woman who can be an MD as well as a President AND be running a social entrepreneurship investment company. (And that's only the start. Check her out.)]
• Power is having “the ability to change the world in powerful ways through collaborative and collective efforts.” – Linda Avey, Co-Founder and Co-President, 23and ME  [There it is again. Changing the world - and in that touchy-feely socialist way rather than just by stamping your boot on it.]

Once my inner little Christopher gets over his fears, what I find most interesting about these women’s words is that they express their interest in power in abstractions and process-oriented statements.

Of course, they are speaking for publication and would probably hide a truth such as: “What I really like about power is rubbing my mother’s/father’s/teacher’s face in their own BS!”. But on the whole I suspect that what they say is true.

Women, after all, are the process-driven gender. Males read the “Tao te Ching” to learn about power. The Tao tells them to adopt the way of the female.

Women have more power than ever before.

In  “A Women’s Nation” Mary Ann Mason reports that women receive:

• 52 percent of high school diplomas,
• 62 percent of associate’s degrees,
• 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees and
• 50 percent of doctoral degrees and professional degrees.
• Women are running more than 10 million businesses with combined annual sales of $1.1 trillion.
• Women are responsible for making 80% of consumer buying decisions.

80 percent! So much for the idea of the all-decisive patriarch.

But three problems persist.

• First, I’m committing the sin of confusing giftedness with eminence. I’m doing this quite deliberately up to this point because I believe the world can benefit hugely from women being able to see that they can attain eminence. And that this eminence does not have to come by adopting the male way.
• Second, women have babies.
• Third, women have parents.

Hi there gifted one! Meet your grandmother . . . father . . . mother . . . child . . .

A major elephant in the gifted woman’s living room is that nearly 86% of women agree that women today still bear the primary responsibility for caring for their sick and elderly parents.

In addition, 85% of women believe that where both partners have jobs, it is the woman who takes on more responsibility for the home and family.

I do not believe that this should be so, and not just from the perspective of injustice. The widespread acceptance of this caring ‘responsibility’ too often results in resentful parents and correspondingly resentful children, or resentful carers and tortured elders.

However, it is a massively reinforced social pressure and may not always be denied. So, I suggest that when gifted women have babies they can be gifted mothers. Or if they must be carers, then be gifted carers.

You don’t have to be captains of industry or firebrand politicians. You can pass your unique influence on through your children, your children’s friends and your parents’ social groups.

Embrace your gifted female-ness

The recognition and understanding of the gifted is largely a female-led discipline. This is unusual in the world of psychology and human development that has largely been dominated by males. For every Melanie or Karen there are three Sigmunds, Karls, Carls, Josef’s, BFs and so on.

However, in the specific field of giftedness it is female insight and intellectual rigor that holds sway. Here are just some of the most influential names in the gifted universe:

• Leta Hollingworth
• Annemarie Roeper
• Mary Rocamora
• Linda Kreger Silverman
• Mary-Elaine Jacobsen

This is not to detract from some very significant male contributions but is intended to focus female readers on the possibility of creating a new sisterhood, one in which the chaos and difference of giftedness is embraced rather than shunned.

Don’t be eminent, be gifted

Even though I’m stuck in a male-centric view of giftedness which, taken to its full potential, results in some form of eminence, you can do better. Here’s a definition of giftedness that says nothing about achievement:

• “Giftedness is asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching and counseling in order for them to develop optimally.” The Columbus Group, 1991

As you can see, being gifted does not force you into some branch of the elite. It merely means you’re different.

I’ll conclude with this extract from a paper by Linda Kreger Silverman, founder of The Columbus Group. It explains why it is so important to claim your label even if you want to do it quietly.

"Shall I embrace my giftedness or just drown it?"

“Gifted children and adults see the world differently because of the complexity of their thought processes and their emotional intensity. People often say to them, “Why do you make everything so complicated?” “Why do you take everything so seriously?” “Why is everything so important to you?”

“The gifted are “too” everything: too sensitive, too intense, too driven, too honest, too idealistic, too moral, too perfectionistic, too much for other people! Even if they try their entire lives to fit in, they still feel like misfits.

“The damage we do to gifted children and adults by ignoring this phenomenon is far greater than the damage we do by labeling it. Without the label for their differences, the gifted come up with their own label: “I must be crazy. No one else is upset by this injustice but me.”

So please. Don’t settle for crazy. Don’t be a woman. Be gifted.

Thank you.