Quote of the Week 2

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” 

-Albert Einstein( credit is given to Albert Einstein, but there is some dispute over who actually said this)

Growing up I often thought about this idea. Clearly the extent to which a person excels in the academic world is not the sole determinate of level of intelligence, so why are people who don’t excel in school considered “stupid”?

Society has an extremely limited scope of intelligences and has a tendency to only reward those people whose intelligences are quantifiable. In reality, there are countless types of intelligences as stated by Howard Gardner, a Harvard professor and developmental psychologist, in his theory of multiple intelligences. He defines intelligence as “the ability to create an effective product or offer a service, a set of skills that make it possible to solve a problem and the potential for finding or creating solutions for a problem”. His categories of intelligences include:

Linguistic Intelligence: the ability to use and understand language

Logical/Mathematical Intelligence: the ability to organize and manipulate numbers, quantities and operations

Musical Rhythmic Intelligence: the ability to recognize, manipulate and reproduce sounds and musical patterns

Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence: the ability to use one’s body in a skilled manner

Spatial Intelligence: The ability to perceive the physical world and visualize how things fit together

Naturalistic Intelligence: the ability to discriminate among living things and relate information to one’s natural surroundings

Intrapersonal Intelligence: the ability to be in touch with one’s feelings, emotions and sense of self

Interpersonal Intelligence: the ability to understand other people and their feelings and experiences while also being able to communicate with and influence people

Existential Intelligence: the ability to pose questions about life, death and the afterlife

While most of these intelligences might be less tangible, that doesn’t mean they should just be swept under the rug and forgotten about. Everyone possesses specific unique abilities and talents and those should be recognized equally as much as those intelligences that can be easily measured.

This quote not only addresses the idea that we all have unique abilities, but it also confronts the idea of judgment and illustrates how hurtful judgments can be. If we were judged by our ability to fly, obviously we would look pretty stupid since, unfortunately, we were not meant to fly. Instead of focusing on the abilities that were not bestowed upon us, we should focus on the things that we do well. Once we uncover these abilities, they are often key in helping us realize what we are passionate about and in what areas we are truly gifted.