Uniquely talented

I BELIEVE in different intelligences and in the value of every single person. Each one is best in some things and weak in others—what we call strengths and weaknesses.

To believe that there are more intelligent individuals on the basis of several talents they possess is downright—what’s the term?—misguided. To compare and rank intelligences is inane, as no two intelligences are alike.

Each talent is unique, and if you pit them against each other, you can only get subjective results—so subjective that you realize you can hold on to this truth only for so long. That is, until someone shows up with a talent so superior that you know you can never get to that level even if you train for it half of your life. That is the time your subjective belief shatters and you learn that your intelligence has limits.

Every day, I meet people who are praised in one area of expertise and berated in others. They are prepared with quick learned answers in a topic they know so well, but they are silent in others. With the people within their league, they are respected and even glorified authorities; outside their circle, they are as average as any other person we tag “stupid.” But if you attempt to prove your weight against theirs, you might receive the same tag you put on them.

So what is the point of ranking each person based on their talents alone when everyone is valuable in their own way? Really, nothing. It just creates segregation among ourselves, which we are so fond of doing—and wait, isn’t that what we do with garbage?

The thing is, you can only be superior in your own little world. You can never outrank a pilot, a taxi driver, a nurse, a laundry woman, a priest, or a fisherman if you are not in these jobs yourself. You can never say you can do better than a parent in taking care of his or her child, if you haven’t parented a child in your entire life. You can never prove yourself better unless you have done the very same job the person you are judging is doing.

We convince ourselves that we are better than others and our kind/crowd/clique much more superior to those outside of it. In the end, that’s the only kind/crowd/clique we’re ever allowed to be in because it’s all we’re ever good at.

Nivea Urdas, 24, is a language and literature graduate. She reads up on multiple intelligence and other behavioral psychology topics in her free time.