My Friends

For some reason, I have the most brilliant friends.

Let me make this clear. I myself am not brilliant. Lucky, yes. Right place, right time kinda’ guy, you bet. But brilliance has never been my forte.

Steven Johnson writes about his visit to an MRI lab for a brain scan. When the results come in, it seems that no particular part of his brain is capable of extraordinarily high ability. There is no “special module”, like Einstein’s “unusually large inferior parietal lobes, which we think gave him his extraordinary spatio-logical skills.” However, an overall orderliness is found that is similarly unusual.

My dad used to say to me during my high school years: “You’re not a rocket scientist, but you’re smart and you’ve got a lot of talent.” I used to bristle at the remark. (If I wanted to, maybe I could be a rocket scientist!) But now I think he was onto something. I’ve met rocket scientists — and astrophysicists, and programming wizards, and architectural geniuses — and I don’t possess anything like what they’ve got mentally. I don’t have their special gifts. But those fMRI images made me think that perhaps I have something else, a little less dazzling, but nothing to be ashamed of either. Maybe I have a well-orchestrated brain — with no world-famous soloists but a nice sound nonetheless.

I feel that this may be my particular gift–sort of a “jack of all trades” deal; the “master of none”, of course, may be an unfortunate side effect. I have always been extremely good at connecting disparate things; seeing parallels between products, industries, and situations. To capitalize on this gift, I’ve considered myself a “metaphor designer” before–one who concentrates on stealing ideas from other industries and using them in a new application.

So it’s very interesting to work with friends who are brilliant, and hopefully I can use my metaphorical prowess to amplify the reach of their work. A mind is a terrible thing to waste; how much more the friendship of those with exceptional minds.