...I wish I had realized just how capable I was as a child and forced people to give me better opportunities.
YIKES! While this sentence may just be a result of hurried writing, it seems to convey an air of superiority, lacking an interest in mutual benefit. Many people work hard to
earn a tryout for an opportunity. When competing, many people with great talent and potential may not be chosen... yet... on that day... in that moment.
I do feel like parents and educational institutions have responsibility to provide children opportunities. I was not afforded those opportunities.
If at first you don't succeed, try try again.
And a smart person knows his limits. Try try again if you feel like the likelihood of a favorable outcome matches the effort you are putting in. Risk vs reward.
You may not be a "prodigy" but that does not mean that you cannot use your talents at your present age.
But it is not the same. Adult neuroplasticity is less than childhood neuroplasticity. Ergo, you have LESS talent than you used to have. You can choose to use those lesser talents towards whatever end you wish.
Unless you prefer an identity of victimhood and resentment. The choice is yours.
I think some amount of indignation may be warranted, though. I believe that everything that at first appears binary is a spectrum. Morality is a spectrum. The extent to which you have an identity of victimhood and resentment is a choice, and I don't think either extreme (zero resentment or utter resentment) is optimal.
My advice for PG adults may be in three parts:
1) Stop THINKing along the lines of:
1a) comparing yourself with others ("I still present very differently than most of my peers." "I seem to retain far more from conversations I've had with people and things I've seen and read and synthesize it all differently than anyone I know")
1b) defining yourself ("unusually curious, quite unfocused..." etc)
1c) overreliance on guidance as to what society expects ("what one can or can not do at a certain age..." "make the kind of living that people expect from you once you're out in the world")
1d) thinking about thinking about thinking
This is useful. Having an internal locus of control and getting out into the world is important and these are all thoughts that have crossed my mind. I think in the egalitarian society we live in, there's this pervasive sentiment that it all evens out in the end once people reach adulthood.
2) Start to emphasize DOing ("...I have no idea what is possible or not possible for me specifically...") It is up to YOU to find out.
Not exactly. It's important to know based on precedent. The prototypical example is Euclid's fifth postulate -- it would have been smart to not spend years of your life trying to prove it. Many people wasted their lives on such pursuits.
Apply yourself. Set goals. Accomplish them.
I am always fine with accomplishing short term goals that take less than a week or so, and have accomplished many such. (They feel meaningless to me because nothing worth doing happens all that quick.) The problem is with long term goals that takes years, which is virtually anything worth striving for, and the accompanying uncertainty and opportunity cost.
the factual and evidence-based investigative work of cold-case detective J. Warner Wallace.
Wikipedia states he's a Christian apologist. In general, the whole heavily Christian-influenced framing of your response makes me unsure of your prior beliefs that are probably entering the suggestions you propose. (Not saying it's a bad thing since everyone has their own philosophy -- just something that I noted.)
