June 28, 2008
Be the Change
“When I started out, my hair had started to turn to silver. My friends thought I was crazy. There was not one word of encouragement from them. They thought I would surely kill myself, walking all over. But that didn’t bother me. I just went ahead and did what I had to do. They didn’t know that with inner peace I felt plugged into the source of universal energy, which never runs out. There was much pressure to compromise my beliefs, but I would not be dissuaded. Lovingly, I informed my well-meaning friends of the existence of two widely divergent paths in life and of the free will within all to make their choice. There is a well-worn road which is pleasing to the senses and gratifies worldly desires, but leads to nowhere. And there is the less traveled path, which requires purifications and relinquishments, but results in untold blessings.” —Peace Pilgrim*
“But to come back to what I said earlier, I know I don’t manage to persuade people to change, but I do it anyway. A story: A just man decided he must save humanity. So he chose a city and he studied and he learned the art of moving people, changing minds, changing hearts. He came to a man and woman and said, ‘Don’t forget that murder is not good, it is wrong.’ In the beginning, people gathered around him. It was so strange, somewhat like a circus. They gathered and they listened. He went on and on and on. Days passed. Weeks passed. They stopped listening. After many years, a child stopped him and said, ‘What are you doing? Don’t you see nobody is listening? Then why do you continue shouting and shouting? Why?’ And the man answered the child, ‘I’ll tell you why. In the beginning, I was convinced that if I were to shout loud enough, they would change. Now I know they won’t change. But if I shout even louder, it’s because I don’t want them to change me.’” —Elie Wiesel*
“I am driven by things that I don’t quite understand. Much of what I’m about, I truly don’t know how I came to it. I mean, I know in the intellectual sense. I know that coincidences appeared and I made choices. But there is a voice—my mother was possessed of that voice. Paul Robeson was possessed of that voice. Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois and Eleanor Roosevelt and Dr. King and Fanny Lou Hamer and others were possessed of that voice. I am just one note in a chord that makes a harmonic sound that gives me the sense of what I must do and where I must go without much debate.” —Harry Belafonte*
“I feel like Joan of Arc at times. My whole becomes uplifted. I, too, hear the voices that say ‘Come,’ and I will follow, no matter what the cost, no matter what the trials I am placed under. Jail, poverty, slander—they matter not.” —Helen Keller*
The second kind of social adaptation may be called “the marginal strategy.” These individuals were typically born into a lower socio-economic class without gifted parents, gifted siblings, or gifted friends. Often, they did not go to college at all but, instead, went right to work immediately after high school, or even before. And, although they may superficially appear to have made a good adjustment to their work and friends, neither work nor friends can completely engage their attention. They hunger for more intellectual challenge and more real companionship than their social environment can supply. So they resort to leading a double life. They compartmentalize their life into a public sphere and a private sphere. In public, they go through the motions of fulfilling their social roles, whatever they are, but, in private, they pursue goals of their own. They are often omnivorous readers and sometimes unusually expert amateurs in specialized subjects. The “double life strategy” might even be called the genius ploy, as many geniuses in history have worked at menial tasks in order to free themselves for more important work. Socrates, you will remember was a stone mason, Spinoza was a lens grinder, and even Jesus was a carpenter. The exceptionally-gifted adult who works as a parking lot attendant while creating new mathematics has adopted an honored way of life and deserves respect for his courage, not criticism for failing to live up to his abilities. Those conformists who adopt the committed strategy may be pillars of their community and make the world go around but, historically, those with truly original minds have more often adopted the double life tactic. They are ones among the gifted who are most likely to make the world go forward.
