I am Gifted! (apparently)

That was what a colleague insisted. Out of the blue he came to me and asked a series of questions. It started with relatively easy ones.

“Were you in the gifted stream during school days?” 

“No.”

“Wait, I think that came years after you. Do you think things in patterns?”

I nodded, not appreciating that he reminded me about my age.

“You are kind of OCD which is one of the traits. Do you get answers or solutions to things you were working on while doing some other pieces of work?”

By then I was beginning to piece together where this could lead to (dang! he was alluding to multi-threading and I fell for it …) but somehow my neck was on autopilot and I was nodding away.

It was his symphony to conduct. I was just the guy holding on to my dear life on a floating log in the sea of his exposition as he waved his wand to create waves after waves until the crescendo hit.

“Just because you are gifted doesn’t mean that I am a fool.”

Bewilderment 1 – Gifted?

I was bottom of my class when I was in my early teens. The Singapore education system has a strong reliance on academics in our nation’s “talent management program”. For a young nation, it was a simple way to establish a baseline. But many have fallen wayside just because of this narrow definition of “good”. It is arguable that shoe boxing children at such tender age may be detrimental to their overall development: either the pressure of being perceived gifted and having to keep it up or the complex one will develop on the other spectrum.

My parents never bothered about my academic achievements or lack of. They were the Asian parents of yester-years, non-communicative but focused on making ends meet to provide a basic standard of living and education. They epitomized “grit” before a book made the word famous. If I could claim a gift, it is the gift of being shown role models to never take things for granted and making the best of what I have.

Bewilderment 2 – What led to this?

To be honest, I never saw this curve ball coming from my colleague who was calm but obviously affected. It was not a single event that led to this I was sure, but accumulation of interactions between us. Whenever there was an issue or plan of action required, I was quick to point the direction and to detail out the steps to get there. As I learned, I smothered his contributions and, in his words, “made him a fool”. I might as well be wearing horse blinder, just trotting forward and not knowing how many died by the wayside. 

And one other thing, never attempt to seek comfort in an office that practices authentic conversations. I made the grave mistake of asking my other colleagues their views about this matter. They almost seemed like they came very prepared, effortlessly relating countless similar interactions with me, one egging the next, pretty much enjoying themselves.

Bewilderment 3 – How did I react?

“You have to forgive me; I am not very self-aware in this respect.”

That was my instinctive and immediate reaction I uttered once my colleague completed his passionate exposition. I was sure that I was not going to stop behaving the way that I have but we have an agreement for him to flash the yellow card when he felt the situation recurring. 

My son, one of the finest young man I have come across (fine! I am a proud dad) once said to me that while right and wrong, good and bad can be relatively binary, each being is unique in that one may not be ready to internalize and respond the way a “normal” person would. Yes he was trying to rationalise that doing housework has no correlation to happiness but if you look beyond that, he did have a point: what I saw as obvious may not be so obvious and the other way is also true, I can’t always see what’s obvious to many.

Bewildered No More 

As my colleagues happily hopped and skipped to lunch after they have had their say about me, their excited chatters fading to a droning hum; I lay on my office floor bruised and thinking: most Asians have problems acknowledging their strength, I say if you have it, claim it! However as with all superheroes who may possess all the good, there will always be an Achilles’ heel. Be vigilant, stay open minded and allow for some check and balances then all should be fine. This way your strength can go a long way and perhaps even encourage the next person to develop this trait for their own.

Gifted Stream has been a staple in local schools where children at age 10 took tests to be streamed to accelerated and/or advance learning