Redwoods and Gazelles
Is it a cheetah?
is a wonderful essay which provides a much-needed metaphor that works well to get people to start thinking about giftedness as something other than straight A's.
But, it also implies that gifted people are dangerous predators. Unfortunately, the world already largely believes that to be true, which is part of why the word gifted is such a hot button in most circles, even on gifted lists.
A lot of gifted people do behave like predators -- or more accurately, are just better predators than average in a mostly dog-eat-dog world.
No matter how idealistic you are, if your only choice is between being a predator or being prey, you will very likely behave as a predator periodically, if only in self defense.
However, with SENG, homeschooling, and other relatively recent sources of support for the gifted community, I would like to believe we are smart enough to find a way out of this mess and stop accepting the role of either the biggest predator on the block or the biggest victim.
I know lots of idealistic gifted people who give away their gifts for the benefit of others while struggling to pay their bills.
I am one of them. I would like to stop feeling victimized but I am unwilling to simply change sides, so to speak, and become one of the predators.
Another thing which bothers me about Is it a Cheetah?: although one purpose of the article is to tear down misconceptions such as achievement = giftedness, it still compares giftedness to speed.
This is a very common association that makes it somewhat hard on the folks who are brilliant but don't operate at warp speed.
Some people are deep thinkers instead of quick thinkers. Others have a huge database stored in their brain, but please don't rush them.
These folks may not test well because of the timed component of many IQ and achievement tests.
Yes, I know there is validity to the idea that if you are very practiced and competent, you will tend to finish faster.
But that is only generally true.
It fails to be true often enough that I am not entirely comfortable with having only one metaphor for giftedness which just
reinforces this all too common idea that giftedness and speed are synonyomous.
There is nothing wrong with using the cheetah metaphor. But I think we need some additional metaphors for these issues.
One metaphor I sometimes use is that some gifted people are like redwood trees, towering intellectually over those around them.
I have compared my oldest son to a redwood, stating that I expect him to grow up slow and that
I think it is important to remember that although a gifted youth may intellectually tower over those around them,
like a young redwood their stature does not change the fact that they are still a sapling.
I have also compared myself to a redwood in that, like redwoods, I often shine the most in the face
of disasters that would destroy or cripple most others. Although I often feel miserable at the time, I find that such challenges
tend to clear the field for me and tend to show how very tall I am (so to speak).
I feel this is similar to how redwoods out-survive other species in harsh climates and go on to become so much taller than most trees:
by living through fires which clear the underbrush and kill other trees,
drinking in moisture from the morning fog in climates with too little rain for most trees to thrive in, and so on
Since coming up with the name Health Gazelle for another website of mine,
the whole cheetah thing has taken on new meaning for me. A gazelle is a small, swift antelope which cheetahs hunt and eat.
I do often feel like I am a target precisely because I am fast but don't want to behave like a predator.
My desire to not bare my fangs and not take swipes at people seems to make a lot of other people want to drink my blood.
It's always a challenge to face such situations without myself turning back into a cheetah (like most gifted folks, I was socialized to behave that way)
and proving that I mastered that game long ago and just don't value it.
The assumption seems to be that if one is nice or polite, it is because one can't hack it.
I can hack it, I just find hacking it to be destructive and not how I want to live.
I have read that lions will kill cheetah cubs if they come across them. No one knows why since they aren't competitors: they don't eat the same food.
This strikes me as a good metaphor for how those in power -- the kings of the jungle --
are often really hostile towards the cheetahs of the world.
My oldest son told me that gazelles pronk (jump vigorously in the air) not to warn other gazelles of danger but to communicate to the lions that
they shouldn't bother to hunt the gazelles: it would be too much work, too little hope of pay-off and they are better off hunting something else.
And it works. The lions do decide to not bother the gazelles.
I like that metaphor. I feel like I sometimes manage to do something similar.
I try to make it clear to people that I am faster and better equipped than they think I am and please don't bother to come after me,
but I try hard to do so without drawing blood or otherwise behaving like a predator.
I find that this approach works suprisingly well in some circles to get people off my back and makes it easier for me to speak my mind publically without constantly feeling like a target.
Being a gazelle (instead of the cheetah I was socialized to be) has made my life mostly easier and more peaceful.
The cheetahs of the human world seem to eat their own a lot,
so I don't think going back to being a cheetah would be some kind of improvement.
Thus I continue to work towards finding some other path, some other paradigm.
In my experience, the biggest challenges in life are mostly mental. Bars do not a prison make nearly so well as the erroneous ideas we grow up with
about how the world works, what our choices are limited to, and so on.
If that prison can be dismantled and new views allowed to thrive, then maybe gifted people can stop choosing to be either the biggest predators on the block
or the biggest victims.
I have never liked feeling limited to those two choices by the mindset of people around me.
Consider this my grain of sand towards changing those social traps.
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