Time flies, and it turns out that I’m now halfway done with my Princeton undergraduate career. It’s been a glorious two years, and as such, I have two things to share:
Category: Musings
When was the last time that you took a personality test — specifically, a Myers Briggs personality test?
Until recently, my answer was “in middle school.” I remember sitting in Redwood computer lab and being forced to take the Myers Briggs personality test. For those of you unfamiliar with the Myers Briggs test, it is a questionnaire intended to highlight psychological preferences in how people perceive the world around them and make decisions. It was based on Carl Jung’s work and contains four opposite pairs of psychological differences, resulting in 16 potential personality types (more on the test here).
What is brilliance?
If you asked last Tuesday, I might have told you that Roger Federer’s movement on the tennis court and his arc-of-destruction, liquid whip of a forehand is brilliant. If you asked me last Thursday, I might have remarked that Kyrie Irving’s career-high 57 point game against the Spurs was brilliant. I might also argue that Alexander the Great’s tactical acumen in the raging heat of battle was brilliant.
The common thread is that these people make super-human tasks seem easy and fluid. It is in these spontaneous performances that we find “brilliance.” As a society, we worship the brilliant. The brilliant are revered as god-like figures, blessed with power and knowledge and understanding that mere mortals can not comprehend — Beethoven’s compositions, Tesla’s flashes of innovation, Jobs’ visionary creations all epitomize “brilliance.”
It is all too easy to attribute these superhuman efforts and endeavors to innate ability or God-given talent, but know that behind the veil of effortless creation, a story of tireless toil and sacrifice lies obfuscated. As outside observers, we will never see the pain and suffering or the hours of deliberate practice these figures poured into their craft.
Know this the next time you witness “brilliance.” Know that you too can achieve remarkable things, but only if you are willing to sacrifice blood, toil, tears and sweat to scale these heights.
I’ve always thought that I needed a lot of sleep to function properly. After all, I’ve slept through earthquakes before, and I even sleep through my brother punching me in his futile attempts to wake me up.
Partially, I attribute this habit to being a teenager, but recently, it’s become a little disturbing. For some strange reason, I’m constantly reminded of my own mortality, and I’ve begun to realize how many hours I’ve wasted by sleeping too much.
What if Socrates didn’t exist?
No, not the quintessential philosophical ideas of Socrates. Those are here to stay. But what if Socrates, the very person, never existed?