brilliance

my daughter, sea...at the sea...age 3...

i feel like a post like this needs a lot of disclaimers...explanations...yet brilliance is something on some level you just get...feel...know...lots of metaphors involved, some apply to just you, some to a few, some to many...i've been wanting to write this post for awhile with much to say and little words to express my ideas...

maybe i should give some context...i have very few readers on this blog. maybe no REGULAR readers in fact (meaning people who don't want to miss anything i've written). i both love and hate this about blogging. you can be fairly anonymous most of the time but when you really feel you have something to say and want an audience...people who relate, "get" you, can give you advice or even when you have advice to give that you think would help many, there is no one there on the receiving end...

i'm not saying this post is going to be profound. i think one component of brilliance is actually humility and being able to "show" brilliance without talking about it. herein lies the irony of trying to write about brilliance.

so more context...i've often thought of myself as brilliant...at different times in my life perhaps i "needed" that belief...or was around people i couldn't relate with so i assumed i was on another level...or from a psychological standpoint, i believe i suffer from some variant of "narcissistic personality disorder" (i was going to write more on this later but quickly did a DSM search for actual criteria...maybe i used to qualify but probably not so much anymore...) i think there is a distinction to be made between selfishness and self-absorption though they can obviously often overlap...i often get consumed by myself yet can still give quite a bit to others...

so more background...i drank too much coffee around 5 p.m. last night and was up much of the night thinking about many things, this idea being one of them...i'll tell you why in a moment after a little more background...i had ideas literally pulsing through my head and felt compelled to write...so much so that finally by 5 a.m. i got up and wrote down a few key words so i wouldn't forget when i actually woke up for good...i probably should have just written this post then when i "felt" it but i felt that was too self-indulgent and many people would pay for it later, myself included.

this post is actually dedicated to a dear friend. i won't say his name or how i know him to protect him (from all the readers i don't have...ha ha!)...he is such a close friend that our family thinks of him as a brother/uncle...we were recently IMing on topics that were way too big and meaningful for the amount of time/energy/effort i was able to put into them. this is frustrating on many levels since i'm always craving meaning and sharing big ideas i feel few people can relate with (back to my narcissism or overly inflated belief in my own brilliance) and i wanted to offer him more...i just didn't have it in that moment. only he really needed it then. so we said goodbye and that we would reconvene and i've been reflecting on many of the issues since then. i still don't have any answers...very frustrating when you feel brilliant in some areas but these don't match with ways you can USE your knowledge/ideas...

but i was reflecting how brilliance is something i think all three of us have in common...three being myself, my husband and this friend, person X...i just think we are brilliant in different ways. i also think we share a perhaps overly healthy dose of self-confidence in ourselves...from a psychological standpoint this grandiosity and subsequent narcissistic result actually stem from an inherent insecurity or lack of self from childhood. can't speak for X on that one, but i know both my husband and i felt misunderstood and like we were not allowed to be who we were as children...i had a very late development of "identity" in my late 20's...in fact i feel like i'm still crafting and/or figuring out "who i am" and this has been a life long struggle for me...

so what is brilliance? dictionary.com offers:

"1. great brightness; luster: the brilliance of a fine diamond.

2.excellence or distinction; conspicuous talent, mental ability, etc.

3.splendor, elegance, or magnificence: the brilliance of the court of Louis XIV.

4.optics . that luminance of a body consisting of its saturation and brightness."

i chose brilliance over "intelligence" because of the additional meanings. when i used to teach psychology at the college level i always enjoyed the discussions that would ensue during our intelligence topic. most people think they know what it is, but when asked to come up with a definition we realize there is so much that goes in...so many types of intelligence...i would also bring up ideas like how intuitive someone is, how motivated they are, whether they follow through on their abilities, their self-confidence not to mention all the different ways someone can be smart. one of my big frustrations is that measures of IQ can only be as good as the people who made them...you are only testing what you put into the creation of the test and somehow we decided to give that much power to a few people? how did we measure their idea to come up with the criteria/specifics of the test? i just think most psychological IQ tests were made for something very specific and often it is just measuring how well people do in typically academically measurable ways...some of the smartest people i know would do really poorly in these areas but shine in so many others...i would also talk about how practical IQ was and whether people had common sense or could relate with others...many of us have had the super smart teacher who had the knowledge in his/her head but no people skills or teaching skills, for example...then there are the people who can just memorize a lot of data and they can come up on games like trivial pursuit or knowing a lot of stats in one area...

i'm quickly losing interest in this topic. i could relate with it on a personal level last night and now it is feeling like i'm writing an essay on something i'm supposed to do instead of something i want to do...so i'll go back to making it more personal...

my friend, person X was struggling with some things and felt like he was not impacting me or people he would like to impact. so i was thinking about the idea of brilliance specifically in his case. he has impacted me in many ways i can't even articulate! thus one of the frustrating things about trying to measure something like this...you don't necessarily get to see the output! i have always thought of him as quite brilliant, capable of so much. what that is you (or he?) might ask and again, i don't know...i think we have to find our own way but my goal has just to be as honest with myself, aware of my limitations but striving to maximize what i do have control over...he has mentioned how i have mentored him but i'm trying to explain the idea that he has done the same for me...we have learned from one another...

we get to try to re-connect today. i may or may not follow up with a blog post on the topic, but i feel better after free associating a little on the topic...