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Our personal mythology can attribute great significance to qualities, like being good at school, and use that significance to explain life outcomes even if that

Our personal mythology can attribute great significance to qualities, like being good at school, and use that significance to explain life outcomes even if that's not a particularly reasonable conclusion. Just like mythology uses simple ideas to explain complex natural phenomenon (e.g. Apollo's chariot pulls the sun across the sky) our personal mythology can use a simple idea to explain more complicated ones (because I was gifted I never tried hard and so I am not X). Without knowing more about the author's life and what she presumes her alternate life would be, it's hard to really make sense of her position in this article. If she had been challenged more and learned the value of hard work she would be... what? What would be different? From her "About" page we see she has an English degree, is a mother of two, and writes articles like this one. If she had been challenged as a child would she have three kids? Write more articles? STEM degree? I've watched bits of the Johnny Depp trial and one thing that has stood out to me is how miserable his life seems. On the outside he's a super-famous movie star with tons of money and a beautiful wife - and on the inside... On Lex Fridman's podcast Kevin Systrom said something about becoming a billionaire that was along the lines of life being similarly hard as it was before. The author of this article seems to have an average life. Most people have average lives. Even people at the margins, your billionaires and movie stars, only have superficially extraordinarily lives that are, at core, fundamentally similar to the average person's life. So, in what sense does this author think her life would have been different had she been challenged more? Suppose the author couldn't play music well and her parents forced her to confront her weakness and learn to play the piano. My intuition is that she would be in the same place in life but would remember, kind of, how to play a couple songs on the piano. The article strikes me as dodging responsibility - "I was not challenged and therefore am not a hard worker." If you want to work hard, then do that. Challenge yourself. And, if you can't do it now, why do you think you could have done it back then?

julianlam 4y ago
That's the exact takeaway I got from the article as well. "I was told I was gifted as a child, and so now I use it as a crutch to justify being average. Woe are we, the gifted."
Phyanak 4y ago
In one of Alan Greenspan's books he says something along the lines that life is the pursuit of self-esteem and self-esteem needs constant nurturing. I think that is pretty accurate. Past accomplishments only nurture self-esteem for so long. I wouldn't doubt Johnny Depp is completely miserable. There is just not much he can do tomorrow with how high the bar was set in his past. At least the average person can still dream the best is yet to come. I am sure being a child prodigy is tough in the same sense.

julianlam 4y ago

That's the exact takeaway I got from the article as well. "I was told I was gifted as a child, and so now I use it as a crutch to justify being average. Woe are we, the gifted."

Phyanak 4y ago

In one of Alan Greenspan's books he says something along the lines that life is the pursuit of self-esteem and self-esteem needs constant nurturing. I think that is pretty accurate. Past accomplishments only nurture self-esteem for so long. I wouldn't doubt Johnny Depp is completely miserable. There is just not much he can do tomorrow with how high the bar was set in his past. At least the average person can still dream the best is yet to come. I am sure being a child prodigy is tough in the same sense.