Only a few people understand us well

Well, I think several factors come into play. First you can divide people who have very specialized interests from those who have highly eclectic interests which cause them to explore lots of different things. You can then eliminate those who lack opportunities to explore—people without good schools or home environments that foster learning. I was lucky; we had The World Book Encyclopedia when I was growing up, which both sparked and satisfied my curiosity. Consequently, I have widely varied interests and a broad foundation of knowledge.

But I am not one of the prodigies you’re asking about because, although I’m a pretty smart person, you are really asking about people with fantastic memories for detail, with an innate ability to see connections between ideas and build new ideas on these connections. You rarely meet people who are jacks of all trades and masters of very many of them. But there are people whose acumen for learning is so startling that you think they simply must have been born with so much knowledge and understanding.

So I guess it takes interest, opportunity, and acumen and the combination is just not very common. I can't put a number on it or anything but I do know the level of intelligence required is very high. High enough to claim a 1 out of a billion level of intelligence or so. The reason it seems these people understand almost anything is because everything is tied together. All relevant knowledge can be deduced by understanding the fundamentals of physics. All that exists follow certain rules and the only confusing aspect of our world are humans. Between understanding fluid dynamics and energy transfer, one could understand weather patterns better.

By understanding materials science and thermodynamics, one could be a much better cook. No reason to go on forever but the similarities between one aspect of this world to another is so intertwined that all information would appear as a large spherical web connected at seemingly every point. Understanding this and being able to put everything together allows one to understand almost anything with out formally studying such things. This makes the acquisition of knowledge faster and easier. The best school in the world is nature itself.

The internet is filled with almost all the information of the world. With a few touch of a button, people can access that information and learn about the truth. Sadly, people don’t do that. Rather than relying on facts and data, they rely on opinionated base assumptions. Why? Because people value their opinion far more than the truth. If religion has taught us anything, it is that against facts, evidence, and undeniable proof, people will still choose to believe in whatever they want to believe in over the truth. That is why they would rather go on to social media receive opinionated answers and not find the answer themselves with the information available to them.

Starting with what were you born with: healthy/sickly, ugly/attractive, active/attentive, male/female, weak/strong, and so much more. Every baby born has their own personality and their own physical attributes, and individual interests and talents too. Next is how well you related to each of your parents, and what you saw them doing. Did you see affection, co-operation, rigid roles, or shared responsibility. Did you see discord, conflict, jealousy, impatience? Was there physical comforting or violence and punishment? Were they equals, or master and subject, was there honesty or deceit.

Also consider what you were taught by parents, siblings, other close relatives. This includes spiritual beliefs, respect for others, your own roles as leader, follower, protector, defender, teacher, student, provider, wife, mother, husband, father, manipulator, diplomat….. and were you taught with kindness, with strictness, with punishment? Now begin to add in personal experiences. What challenges were put before you, what music did you hear? What traditions or family stories became your culture.

Now, you are already 60–70% of who you will become, and you are only now old enough to attend school. So, you can see where, even within the same family, we each grow up and experience life differently. Some of us are similar, but none of us is the same. We try to fit into the group we live, play or work with. Within a peer group we may begin to assume that everybody wants the same things, feels the same way about a lot of values. Is this correct? Probably not. Each one of us has to actually make an effort to see that differences are natural. We may consciously choose to work at learning how other people view the world.

Then we need to find one other person who is also making this effort. And then - maybe, you will want to understand each other and you might become close friends. One thing that helped to answer this question for me, was that I took a test called the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. There are a variety of related free tests on the internet and this kind will show you which of 16 main personality categories you fit into. The categories are not represented equally throughout the general population, some types are more common and some are extremely rare. If you answer the questions, for any that seem difficult, try to imagine how you would have answered when you were a teenager. Cheers!