Maybe I shouldn’t be writing while I’m so tired. But I can’t seem to
even sleep, so I guess I’ll write.
For over a year, I have prayed off and on for God to make me stupid so
that I wouldn’t be so lonely. Upon first hearing that, it might sound a bit
arrogant or like I’m just avoiding the real cause of my loneliness by claiming
exceptional intelligence. I guess maybe I didn’t quite understand what I was
praying for. I was seeing particular areas where others just didn’t seem to be
as intelligent as me a lot of the time. I believe that everyone is gifted
differently, with gifts that may or may not be as common, and with gifts that
may or may not be as glorified by those around us. I guess what I’ve meant when
I’ve asked God to make me stupid is that I don’t want my gifts. They’re not
ones that many people seem to have. Or maybe the combination of gifts that I hold
is not all that common. And they tend to be ones that make others uncomfortable
rather than happy. I have felt isolated by them to the point that I would
rather not have them than be so alone.
I’m not saying that all of my loneliness is due to the fact that I seem
to be gifted differently. But it is largely due to that. Due to the fact that I
can’t share the deepest parts of who I am with many, if any, people because
they don’t understand. It’s because I tend to be very misunderstood by others.
Perhaps this is something that everyone experiences on some level. Maybe God is
the only one who can completely understand every part of us as individuals.
There a lots of gifts that go unrecognized in the world because they
don’t seem to be of any benefit to anyone, at least not in an obvious way. We
calculate everyone’s worth based on how practical their existence is, or how
they make us feel.
For example, thinking outside the box and making connections between
about a 100 different things within a short time is not something that a lot of
people find worth anything to their practical day to day lives. Why wonder if
there are angels who are spirits of the earth that each have their own realm of
the earth to protect --an angel for all the grains of sand, one for the clouds,
one for the wild roses...—when this sort of thinking does nothing to help you
make money, live, or act in a practical way. Why wonder if certain animals
experience other dimensions? Why question my own existence and wonder if I’m
just a figure of the imagination of some other creature of another world that
actually exists, so really, I do exist, but that creature has
no idea because to him, his dreams are just thoughts, and our dreams are
actually happening elsewhere as well without our knowledge? This doesn’t help
the practical, world, so what’s the point right? That’s what a lot of people
think anyway.
This is something about myself that I have chosen to accept as a gift.
It is the gift of creatively being able to think outside the box. I see its
intrinsic worth just because I do. The ability to think this way may be applied
to other areas somehow, but I’m not sure where I’d want to apply it
yet. But these thoughts are great to me because they are, and because I don’t
see how anyone could help having them. I was made that way. It was a gift. But
it gets lonely when I actually hit upon something outside the ordinary that
actually seems to make sense in my gut, like it should be true, and there’s no
way to prove it to anyone, so people dismiss me as strange. I’m not the only
one in the world with this gift. But within our practical day-to-day world, it
often goes unappreciated.
A couple of other gifts of mine are intense emotional depth, and the
ability to perceive others and empathize by putting myself in their shoes.
Though I’m not always right and I’m not psychic (that I’m aware of), I can be
pretty intuitive sometimes. I can often see beyond the surface of a situation
and know how others must feel. I can often see the discrepancy between what
people are expressing, and where it all is truly coming from. I see multiple
layers to humans. So and so thinks they feel a certain way but underneath their
current feelings is what they actually feel, they are just too uncomfortable to
feel that feeling, so they are unconsciously expressing something else and
claiming that feeling because of a specific thing that they may or may not be
aware of. And then there are those moments when I recognize myself doing the
same things, and I attempt to express all my different layers to someone which
just confuses them.
My perceptions could actually be beneficial in helping others. But
usually, I’m just impatient with them and tell them what I see, only angering
them. Sometimes it’s best to keep quiet. Especially since there’s always the
chance that I’m wrong and no one likes to be misunderstood. So do I always use
the perceptions I see for good? No. Do I feel I have the capability to help
people? To be honest, that’s incredibly difficult. I don’t trust myself, mainly
because it seems that I often feel things in a much different way than others
and would want to be comforted in a way that is different than others, and also
because of my sheer lack of practice interacting with people. When I have
multiple gifts, which ones do I decide to act upon in a given moment? How do I
use it all at once? When would keeping my perceptions to myself be enabling or do
more harm than good, and when is it too assuming and forward? Ideally, it may
be best to use my perceptions to empathize, but it seems that the interactions
of my gifts do not always go so smoothly. I lack self-control and patience.
I’ve been hurt before while empathizing when the person I was talking to
told me to stop being a drama queen. That hurt, because apparently either I was
just making the person feel awkward by the connection, or I was feeling their
situation more deeply than they were. If I had been in their situation, I would
have felt it as intensely as I was expressing empathy for them. When I allow my
own deep feelings to override my what I'm feeling with others out of empathy, it seems to do more harm
than good. This is where I feel the combination of gifts I hold may cause some
frustration in my attempts to interact with people. Seeing things on multiple
levels constantly is hard when I’m trying to respond in the moment. Which
levels should I respond to in which moment? The ones they want me to interact
on, or the ones I see that seem to be the more honest realm, but they probably
don’t want me to see it or address it? This is where my gift of thinking
outside the box and seeing all sorts of ways to respond can also cause some havoc
in the pressures of the moment while interacting with others. What do I listen
to?!
Feeling my own personal feelings intensely is lonely in that I can’t
share the deepest feelings I have with people. As I said, it comes out sounding
overly dramatic to others who haven’t experienced the same thing. And every
time I am dismissed as ridiculous, when I try to open up, the more I feel like
a freak of nature, mentally unsound, or simply childish and immature. But I’ve
begun to accept my emotional depth as a gift. Some of my most profound thoughts
or beautiful creative works came from experiencing the world so intensely. Regardless
of the number of people who might relate or enjoy them, they’re worth creating
to me.
One of the most frustrating things is that the depth of my heart is
sometimes only experienced to me when I am alone. Or I may experience things at
random times much later than when the actual event took place. So others do not
see my heart, and think of me as cold and heartless. Because I do not always
cry or laugh with the rest, I am apparently unfeeling. Others may not be as
capable of seeing beyond the surface, so they dismiss me. (And obviously, I’m
not nearly always capable of seeing beyond the surface either. That’s a lot to
see.) So I can’t win. Because if I allowed myself to fully experience my
feelings and express them, they’d make others uncomfortable and so I'd be shot
down. If I can’t express my real feelings within social expectations of
expression, I better not express them at all. And if I don’t express anything,
I am unfeeling. So I become that. I shut down myself emotionally.
Of all my gifts, this is the most lonely. Because even when I do make
friends, it seems I lack the depth of connection in the areas I need it. Our
perceptiveness is not equally matched and/or our emotional depths are
imbalanced. My gifts just don’t match with the other person’s.
I won’t go into depth about every gift I’ve discovered
in myself or seen in others, but there is one other in particular that makes me
angry. Should it make me angry? I guess it’s only human of me. It isolates me.
It makes sense that it would make me angry. This gift is standing up for what I believe to be
right, regardless of the pressure of those around me to conform. I’ve always
wanted things to be fair. I’ve always been deeply in tune with hypocrisy. I’ve
always held to a standard of honesty and integrity and wanted to be the best me
possible. Not that I’ve never made a mistake in these areas; I don’t believe
I’ve ever gone a day without making many mistakes. But these are definite
strengths of mine. And though some were things reinforced by my parents, I
think these things were just naturally important to me because they were.
As a child, I had heard a verse from the Bible. It was James 4:17. “If
anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for
them.” I took this to a ridiculous extreme. I decided that I wanted to go one
whole day without sinning, and remembering this Bible verse made that
difficult. Having walked outside and seen all the endless weeds in the yard,
and knowing my dad would be greatly appreciative if I picked them (it was way
more than one days’ work), I felt compelled to pick them. So I began.
Eventually, I gave up, feeling I had failed. I couldn’t be perfect. Perfection
for me was impossible. So I sadly relayed to my mom that I didn’t think I could
ever go one whole day without sinning. Those weeds were just overwhelming. But at least I cared about self-improvement.
Also as a child, there were times when unfairness just seemed to loom
out at me and I attempted to shrug it off. I was told not to be selfish, but
then other kids would run to the car and claim shotgun so they got to sit in
the front seat. It never occurred to me to do something like that. I would have
rather taken turns and kept things fair. All I could think about was that it
seemed selfish to push to get what you wanted like that and unfair to be
rewarded for it. I would think in my mind of the verse Matthew 20:16, “So the
last will be first, and the first will be last.” It didn’t make sense to me. I
was last, and I got nothing. My interpretation of the verse at the time made me
feel that I was experiencing injustice. Not that I was never selfish, but the
injustice just stuck out at me. I didn’t understand the competition.
I remember adults speaking to me in a rude way that I needed to talk
nicely. Hypocrisy. I was told to respect and listen to my elders who I didn’t
feel listened to or respected by. Hypocrisy. So I didn’t obey. Whether I was right or
not, fear never stopped my defiance. But I only ever defied people to their
face, because that was the honest thing to do. Never secretly behind anyone’s
back. I was a good kid like that, but that got me into more trouble than other
less honest children experienced. More unfairness.
Currently at my age, I still stand for things that are sometimes
unpopular with the people that I know, even if it’s not necessarily a matter of
morality. For example, refusing to shave my body hair. I feel it is a hassle,
an injustice, and I would rather be unloved for my natural body than unloved
for a standard my efforts have told me I can’t keep. If I am ever truly loved
by a man and thought to be beautiful by him, then I would like him to love my
body as it is naturally. I don’t want the pressure to continually try and
change it. If I ever find someone willing to love me as I am, I believe I will
have actually found something extra significant and affirming. But all many people
see is the hair. They don’t understand my need to be real.
All people see is the hair. I do what I think is right or what I feel is
best, and all people see is my blatant defiance of social norms. I challenge
popular views about the Bible and Christianity and all people see is someone
argumentative and challenging. All people see is my straight face. All people
see is me pushing for change in the world that they don’t want changed. All
people see is someone who they feel does not want connection and does not want
community because I don’t act the way they think I should. And all I see are
people who appear to me to lack perceptiveness, and depth, and they lack the
abilities to introspect, think outside the box, or put themselves in someone
else’s shoes…
And I blame them. At least I have. I have become bitter and angry. I
mean, I’m perfect and never jump to conclusions right? Just kidding.
I recently read this random older article called “
Can You Hear the Flowers Sing? Issues For Gifted Adults. I had not thought of myself as “gifted” before. I know
other people who seem to be academically much smarter than me. But I related so
strongly to this particular article that I realized that, yes, I am gifted. And
I believe that everyone is in some way. Maybe it’s just that my gifts are not
something that everyone, or even very many people, have.
After reading the article, I occurred to me that I need to give people a
break. Just like I would like others to give me a break in areas where I am
weak, like how I am totally unable to get anywhere on time, and how I have
anxiety from not knowing quite the right way to interact in a social situation.
Feeling different and misunderstood is difficult, but I am only isolating
myself more by being angry at people for something they may not even be able to
change. That’s something I don’t know for sure. But holding everyone to a
certain standard of interpersonal depth perception that they might not be able
to reach is unrealistic no matter how lonely a situation is. My expectations of
others are at least in part to blame for my feelings. The anger and resentment
don’t help me. Instead, being able to see my abilities as gifts that others may
or may not share has helped to soften my heart to others more, and helped me to
attempt to be more understanding, rather than feeling like they just weren't doing what was right or attempting to be the best them possible.
Before, I never gave myself the freedom of truly acknowledging myself as
a gifted person. I still question it because, though in some ways it is nice to
know, it also feels like a curse, and it makes me worried that someone will
think I’m trying to uphold some sort of vision of grandeur about myself.
Like many people, I struggle with just dealing with everyone on my
level instead of realizing that we all have individual strengths and
weaknesses. I had been using my gift of perceiving people to hit people where
it really hurt them, and tear them down in frustration, rather than to really
perceive what they were feeling and build them up. I listened to the parts I
wanted to listen to, and acted on my own intense feelings rather than using my ability to empathize to help them.
When people don’t interpret my gifts as gifts, it’s hard not to listen
to them. Regardless, there is worth to me outside of others’ opinions. It’s
hard when our strengths are ones that are not as obviously recognized by others
and go underappreciated. It’s also hard when our weaknesses are ones that
others don’t seem to struggle with as much. Though it all seems isolating,
maybe we can share this new journey of just accepting where we’re similar and
accepting where we’re different. And perhaps when you notice something unique
within yourself that feels isolating, try to recognize that your unique
contribution is needed, regardless of how small it seems to you or
others.
Perhaps your contribution is the missing piece to an unseen puzzle,
waiting to be finished. Whatever you do, try not to pray for God to make you
stupid like I did (or smarter either). In the end, He’s the only one who can truly know you anyway.
He’s the One you need. He's the one who gave you worth. Others’ positive regard can never match His, the
regard that really matters.
