Embrace the Shake

Following up on the thought that where perfectionism can limit, embracing limitations can be a source of creativity and freedom, this 10 minute Embrace the Shake - Ted Talk talks seems like a good follow-up to [Welcome to] the Dark Side, last week's post.  It is a reminder that struggle, limitations, are a gift in life - that your weakness can be your strength.  So counterintuitive, like the meek inheriting the earth, last being first, power made perfect in weakness, foolish things confounding the wise.

Many - most? - gifted people are asynchronous in their development and sometimes their huge strengths are matched by huge weaknesses. They may be able to remember anything but be less advanced in logic and reasoning.  Or be hugely good at math but struggle with processing speed and working memory; excellent hockey players with massive physical literacy who struggle to read; or may be extremely logical and well-read, but then struggle with social cues.  What does this mean for them? How are these weaknesses a gift?

In the Bible, the passage 2 Corinthians 12 refers to Apostle Paul, and his 'thorn in the flesh', saying is is what keeps him from being conceited. Somehow, humility trumps perfection every time. What a lesson. I wonder if humility gives us eyes to see ourselves and others clearly?  Does it open our eyes and ears to God?  Perhaps true humility allows us to embrace our faults, live with an inner peace and confidence, rather than obsessing about ourselves, or exhausting ourselves by maintaing and projecting/defending an image?  Integrating our strength and weakness. Hmmm...wholeness.  A beautiful thing.  Shalom.

Carmen

[Welcome to] the Dark Side of Giftedness

It is early February and an exploration of the Dark Side seems appropriate for those of us living on the Wet West Coast.  So when I was sent an article recently about the dark side of giftedness - how gifted children are frequently misunderstood - I found it timely for a reposting here.  I encourage you to take a moment and give it a read. Marcello Di Cintio ends his article with a quote and a poem, (bottom of this article too) saying "Unless their heart is intact, no learning can happen".  True of all people, not only the gifted. 

What a precious thing to steward as parents and educators: the intact hearts of the young, as they bring us the treasure of themselves, offering openly and fully their enthusiasm, optimism, passion, and curiosity. And yet so many are wounded so early. So quickly and easily crushed, discouraged, disappointed. (And not uncommonly, crushed by parents and educators, friends, careless and rushed despite best intentions.) While my heart wants to scream and protect and wrap in cotton all the children I know and knew from any pain - the pain of bullying, or abuse, of neglect, of illness, disease, distress, disability - children are 'wired for struggle', for challenge.  As humans we need it, crave it. In our world, we will never be free of it. It is thrown at us or we throw ourselves at it, one way or another. 

Perhaps gifted individuals, often so sensitive to injustice, with that extra capacity to feel and understand, are more quickly and deeply wounded than most. It seems so, in my experience with gifted students. They certainly often have incapacitating anxiety and the perfectionism they deal with can be like a sucking mud around their feet. But again, they are certainly not alone, not in their need of an intact heart and not in feeling the pain of growing up, the pain of living. 

I often come back to an experience in an art class, where the instructor, Wendy, had us spend an hour drawing from a model... only to have us then (unexpectedly) tear the work into pieces, reassemble it in a new way and then create a piece out of that.  It broke my heart a little to tear up what I had worked on, this perfect piece that I was proud of and that had a piece of me in it...but having to work with the torn drawing, having to problem solve, having to make something new from the wreckage struck a cord in me.  I learned not to hold perfection as quite so precious, to be willing to risk and to see new ways to make the broken even more beautiful than the perfect - more accessible, more interesting, unexpected, and even more lovely. 

 My job sees me constantly work with gifted children in crisis, families in distress. So I am constantly reminded and remind others that brokenness and wounding are not the end. If our lives are made and built around our strengths, that strength is made accessible by the humility, the compassion developed in brokenness. And when healing completes the circle, a person of such translucent beautiful strength remains, with so much to offer the world.  

I always figured my role in life was going to be a re-builder of sorts but I didn't quite know what that was going to look like. Now I think that perhaps that is what we are all called to, at times, whether we are on the outside or inside of a life that has broken down. To rebuild and not discard. To rebuild along side that person, even if it is oneself, to put shoulder to the work, to clear a weed or pass a brick.  To not give up and abandon the work. And sometimes,  to lay a hand upon a brow and reteach a thing its' loveliness.

...sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within...

From Saint Francis and the Sow by GALWAY KINNELL 

Carmen