The Burden Of Brilliance

Sylvia Plath was wrong, you are a whole fig tree and so much more. You just need to remember where your roots are and allow the branches to reach and touch the skies.

I am brilliant and unapologetic about it. I don't mean I am human and all humans are special. I am, particularly and singularly brilliant. At 26, let me take you through some of what my life and talents have looked like. The brilliance and the burden of it all. 

At 7, people began discovering my raw talent for singing. Thus began a decades long and ongoing love affair with music. Like all relationships, there were times I did not want to be in that space. In my time as a vocalist I have performed at many great venues - maybe not as a headliner but as a performer nonetheless. Maybe I never became a beautiful vocalist, but I was still an excellent one. I still am. Along with singing came another talent- dance. I did not have the raw talent at first but I was able to grow into dance gracefully and beautifully. I have a Visharad in Bharatnatyam that I earned when I was 19. First class. I will not say that I am especially good at dancing. I am not especially good at anything really. That is not the point. But I am good. Gracefully, elegant and memorable. I can dance well and you will more likely than not enjoy my performance. That much I can promise. These were the talents that defined me around my childhood and adolescence. Apart from this I was a surprise student. Under the radar and low-key most of the year and performs at critical moments. Excelled at both my board exams but pretty much stayed uninteresting academically in other ways. When I say excelled, I mean I gave stellar performances. Truly. In subjects I actually despised. Math and science. I am a critical humanities soul but I did it anyway because I could. 

My young adulthood looked different. I was an excellent student and graduated college with a 4.0 GPA. I studied journalism with minors in psychology and philosophy. I was especially talented at philosophy and it remains one of my favourite subjects. I still read complex texts that enrich my life and help me engage with the world more critically. I was also good at human psychology but not to the point of any clinical career progression. More in understanding people and creating depth and nuance. I also became a good writer and a published journalist during this time. I don't want to detail what all I did, you can google me and find out. I also learned how to cook well, how to practice yoga, a little bit of ballet, media theory and editing, and embroidery during this phase of my life. I could use most of Adobe Suite by the time I graduated and was actually really good at video layering. Especially for authentic documentary style storytelling. Not so much motion graphics. In between I tried to learn French and did somewhat okay, and improved my grasp on both Hindi and Gujarati. I learned post-colonial theory and neo-colonization as well as feminist critiques. It complemented my love for philosophy. I also developed a keen sense of style which motivated a shopping addiction that turned into clothing curation. These days I have a carefully curated closet where every piece has a bit of a story. I also get compliments on my outfits most days. Not every day, but many. Like I said, I am not exceptionally good at anything. 

Following my Bachelor’s I studied Media Design for my Masters. I loved learning a new discipline and while it wasn't where I fully shone, I did develop a good work ethic, design sense, and research capacity. I was also able to understand that I worked brilliantly under pressure and that I was good at writing reports and research. I enjoyed qualitative and multidisciplinary research. Somewhere in between I tried to dabble in tech ethics especially AI ethics. This was before ChatGPT took over by the way and when Palantir was not as concerning as it has become. I also tried my hand at GIS, data visualization, and some data software. These days I only use excel. I did some website design, some UX here and there as part of my human centered design work. I did not do very well at the UX part of things but was great at ideation and synthesis. Really good actually. Also excellent at stakeholder management and relationship building as well as networking. I presented a thesis at a conference. It was part of policy action. One of my informational videos made its way to a candidate’s legislative campaign website. My work in civics had some impact.  Nothing went viral or made headlines. But it had soft impact and that was enough for me. 

These days I work for a clean energy company, in an early career role. Nothing too glamorous. I also train in gymnastics which I am surprisingly good at. Surprising only to me. I plan on learning surfing at some point soon. I bake unique desserts for people. I also have a keen sense of interior design as evident by my modest but beautiful bedroom. 

So there you have it. I am extraordinary. Not because I am an extraordinary singer or dancer or journalist or researcher or designer or chef or stylist or gymnast or philosopher. It is because I am all of those things all at once and I am good enough to have some kinds of validations for each of them. I am the ultimate polymath. 

But it is never enough. Because all my life, all my talents and my brilliances have come with expectations, from myself, from others. 

You can do so much. Why don’t you monetize it? Why don’t you capitalize it? You can be everything and anything. You will never be unemployed for too long. Why are you not more successful? 

Why are you not more more more..? 

Because that is all we see isn’t it? Production. Extraction. 

My largest struggle and source of my anxiety has been that I was never able to market myself well enough despite being extraordinary. That I was not able to string together these various talents and sell myself. Into a neat extraordinary package. I am resentful and grateful about it because it has shaped my understanding of my brilliance. More importantly, it has given my talents something more talented people miss: agency. My brilliance is not owed to anyone, not even myself.
It does not answer to ROIs. It is not a product to be consumed.  To be produced. 

It just is. It lives, loves, breathes, and embodies. It is not bound by deadlines and it is not constrained by consumer expectations. 

It just is. 

Do I have to become a singer if I can sing well? Is it not enough that I can enjoy the most beautiful music with deep understanding and at times reproduce it, even create my own? 

Do I have to become a stylist if I have a good sense of style? 

Why does my job have to reflect all the dimensions I am and all the dimensions I am not. I do not have a glamorous job. And yet, I am still extremely, exceedingly, disgusting, and unfathomably brilliant. 

And even as I write it, I only half-believe this. Because the guilt is deep. The pressure is everywhere. Outside, inside, without, within. 

What would success look like for someone who can't be marketed? 

What does success look like for someone who won't be marketed? 

I don’t fit in, not yet. I never have, I do not believe I ever will. Because you can package a brilliant scientist and a brilliant designer. But how do you capture someone who is just brilliant? 

Talent is beautiful, wonderful and something to be celebrated. A gift bestowed upon the lucky. And I have been kissed by it many times over. So why can’t just I let go? Allow brilliance to shine. Not spotlight it, not commodify it. 

Perhaps the guilt and the resentment and the joy and envy will always remain. 

It is uniquely human to take the gift of joy and turn it into a burden of responsibility.