The quotes that I've pulled below are the reason I shared this article. I think some of you are getting sidetracked by the narcissism talk.
Today’s graduates are also told to find their passion and then pursue their dreams. The implication is that they should find themselves first and then go off and live their quest. But, of course, very few people at age 22 or 24 can take an inward journey and come out having discovered a developed self.
In the first quote, I think the author speaks well to the challenges of being a polymath and lacking life experience. How can you possibly "discover" yourself in a meaningful way in several fields and build an appreciation for what a life in each of those areas looks like in your early 20s?
By that point I had finished grad school and had worked for a few years as a researcher alongside people in their 30s and 40s. I wasn't even that young when I started work full time--20--what about the people who finish grad school at 16?
I remember reading in Miraca Gross' book "Exceptionally Gifted Children" the story of the person under the pseudonym "Christopher Otway". Christopher was able, through radical acceleration and compacting, to take basically every high school course offered at his school and begin university at 16. I think there is tremendous value to be had from such an approach--perhaps combined with dual enrollment in the student's areas of strength, entrepreneurship, and practical internships (like HK's DD has done) because these experiences ground interests in reality and connect them tangibly to life after X degree.
The graduates are also told to pursue happiness and joy. But, of course, when you read a biography of someone you admire, it’s rarely the things that made them happy that compel your admiration. It’s the things they did to court unhappiness — the things they did that were arduous and miserable, which sometimes cost them friends and aroused hatred. It’s excellence, not happiness, that we admire most.
This speaks to me. I strongly believe that meaning and happiness don't collapse into the same neat set. Personal difficulty has, ironically, been the best source of long-term happiness because it's forced me to look squarely at my weaknesses (and outside myself) and find causes that force me to grow to use my abilities fully. I think this is particularly important for gifted children, because they often don't even get to test their limits or experience real growth until adulthood, if ever.
I get that parents want happiness for their children, but more than anything, I want meaning and growth for my son, even if that means he spends some of his life impoverished or ostracized for his choices. I believe happiness isn't an end in and of itself, but a by-product of feeling that you have used your life well. I have to wonder if gifted families almost have to sidestep the happiness goal entirely and foster growth if they want their polymath children to have a reasonable chance at happiness.
