"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!"

Sam went on to Cambridge University, became President of the Union, a Conservative MP and eventually a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet. Dave rejected academia and left school totally confused, without a clue what to do for a living. It took several decades of experiment before he found his feet.

Conformist or creative?

How come two boys with such similar intellectual resources and training grounds could end up so differently?

Part of the answer lies with their families but another part lies with their natures.

Sam was deeply conformist. He saw that his path to success lay in accepting the status quo and working within it. He rejoiced in his vision and embraced it with gusto.

Dave challenged everything. He saw the inconsistencies, the illogical choices and outright hypocrisy that prevailed on the conformist path. He could not see a way forward that also possessed integrity.

This was not a matter of conscious choice. Sam could no more challenge the existing rule than Dave could avoid questioning it. Sam would fight to support the dominant authority. Dave could only support that which made intellectual sense.

In the terms of giftedness, Sam is a gifted conformist while Dave is a gifted creative.

Comfort and joy?

If you are gifted, your chances of achieving a life of comfort and ease are greatly enhanced if you are conformist.  This study shows why:

In the 1960s, E. Paul Torrance, head of the Bureau of Educational Research at the University of Minnesota, began studying creativity. His focus was on school children but his discoveries will be recognized by many gifted adults who’ve experienced being ‘selected out’ throughout their lives.

A gifted creative justifies the gifted way

Teachers, he discovered, do not like creative children. They prefer the child of high intelligence and low creativity. This child is not a rebel and completes school assignments with dispatch and perfection.

Creative children, on the other hand, “seem to be playing around when they should be working at assigned tasks. They engage in manipulative and/or exploratory activities, many of which are discouraged or even forbidden.

“They enjoy learning, and this looks to the teacher like play rather than work. They are intuitive and imaginative: enjoy fantasy; see unusual uses in ordinary objects; are flexible, inventive, original, perceptive and sensitive to problems. They have vital energy.”

Torrance found that 70 percent of the children who rated high in creativity would not be selected to be members of a special class for intellectually gifted children even if their test scores warranted it. They annoy teachers who see them as not serious or dependable.

Could do better if . . .

These children are the perennial recipients of the: “Could do better ” award. They are the ones who make discipline hard, not from malice but from brightness. They are the ones whose witty answers to prosaic questions make the class laugh and drive their teachers to distraction.

If you’re like me you’re already warming to the idea of these bright kids. However, Torrance was a pragmatist and wrote: “It is evident that many of them [creative children] bring upon themselves many of their woes. Obviously, one task of education is to aid such children to become less obnoxious without sacrificing their creativity.”

It strikes me that this response was well-meaning but a bit half-hearted.  I would rather suggest that the gifted creative adult allow him or herself to be “obnoxious” (to use Torrance’s word, which I wouldn’t) but be ready to accept the inevitable isolation and hostility that goes with it.

Creative autodidact

Very few schools are up to the task of teaching according to their students’ needs rather than the teachers’. This is partly because of lack of resources but also due to lack of will.  (Educationalists have done some great work on differentiating individual learning approaches but they seem to overlook their own discoveries when it comes to lesson planning.)

However, once you’re away from the learn-test-forget environment of formal education you can put your good-humored creativity and passion for the truth to good service as a creative autodidact. After all, as the great creative genius Albert Einstein said: “ The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education”.

Not bad, just buttoned up

It’s obvious that my leaning is toward the creatively gifted.  Otherwise I’d be a retired senior civil servant living in a grace and favor home in the UK’s Windsor Great Park.

Not really blind, just gifted but buttoned up

However, I do feel a lot of compassion for the gifted conformists. Their commitment to the status quo means that they cannot contribute to change but in my experience they often feel quite conflicted about their position.

Their intellects, often developed to a high level of rigor by their profession, cannot easily overlook the defects in the systems they support and thrive within. This means they are forced to live by phrases such as: “That’s just human nature.” to explain their co-existing with the venality of many of their peers.

And, of course, they externalize their inherent need for natural justice by establishing the mechanisms of judgment at various levels: by examination, by professional body, by law, etc.

In this way, they find a comfortable place of limbo, hanging between a radical commitment to ‘truth’ and a pragmatic acceptance of societal imperfection. Interestingly, they are often more radical in their extra-curricula activities, supporting contemporary arts, liberal governments and even causes such as organic farming and the greening of the nation. Thus they find balance.

In my time of youthful innocence  I assumed that every thinking person was a natural-born radical but had had it trained out of them. I no longer think this is true of all. However,  many gifted conformists do turn in later life to develop those aspects of their inner lives which they had carefully put aside “for the sake of their careers.”

It is never too late to draw riches from the mine of the soul. Never too late to open the doors to the gifted creative within. You just have to give yourself permission.