This is how our environment ruins us.
I remember when I placed 3rd in the region in CXC POB and my POB teacher asked me if my parents took me out to dinner or bought me a gift.
I told her no. She frowned. Another teacher gave me a gift the next day. I went to my awards’ ceremony alone, someone (a stranger) stopped me one day on the Bridge at Grange Hill square and said “Little girl, me neva know a so you bright, me see you on TVJ a collect CXC awards”
I nodded and told her thanks and was on my way.
I even hid this external exam triumph from some of my cousins and friends. I didn’t want them to resent me. I learned quickly as a child that people didn’t like me because it was rumored that I had higher than average intelligence. Eccentric brilliance can trigger insecurity in people who haven’t cultivated those traits.
In sixth form, I placed second islandwide in CAPE literature and I hid it too. My former classmates talk about it to this date. How I mash up the CAPE exams and didn’t attend classes.
I stay guarded, did the work and expect little reward from it. My business partners complain that I give away $2000 USD work for $200 dollars. One said I do not know my worth. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
A taxi man heard I had twelve subjects and multiple distinctions and asked me one day what subscription meant.
A friend of mine told me, one day I was walking on the road and a taxi driver said to the occupants of his car that “you see that girl there, a the brightest gal that inna Westmoreland”
“See how she look simple”
“Yuh cah believe it”
I also remembered when one of my neighbors further down the road asked me for one of my old books. Said she wanted to use it to tutor her child. My auntie told me to tell her I don’t have any book to give her and that she was the devil.
A friend of mine once said that he noticed that I do not receive compliments well. I told him it's because I am from an ecosystem where my accomplishments were not recognized as a compliment to me. People spoke about my genius in relations to them affiliating with me or knowing me. The praise is for them. It's like social capital for them.
This has been happening since I was a child. My family will literally tell people how brilliant I am and they won't tell me to my face. As an adult, the men I date, those men never praise me to my face but they will tell other people how smart I am or how much of a good woman I am. I guess everything up close- looks normal eh. Familiarity transform extraordinary into ordinary.
You know, something I’ve come to realize-and I think I saw someone express this before -is that when you’re working on a big project. Like when I was deep in writing my books, that’s when i craved support, applause, recognition and when I didn’t get it when the world finally caught up, the praises now feel hollow to me. I can’t receive it.
I don’t quite know how to react, because emotionally and mentally I’ve already moved on. When I needed it, it wasn’t there, so I adapted, detached, and stopped expecting it. Somewhere along the way, I started to believe what my environment reflected back at me : that this book thing wasn’t a big deal. My skills aren’t a big deal.
I didn’t see how remarkable it was to write 29 books and counting, to have the discipline to sit and write a chapter or two a day.
I didn’t grasp it until people in the industry started saying, “Your work is impressive” because I am from a place rife with chronic negative feedback. The emotions aimed at you are mostly negative -rarely anything uplifting. When people say the ghetto is rough, it’s not just about infrastructure or economics; it’s the psychology, the emotional climate, the spiritual weight of the place. It’s a troubling environment to grow and create in, and to survive, you learn to shrink your own brilliance until someone outside finally names it.
Your efforts and sacrifices are never validated in the process when you need it the most. Now applause feels mismatch and weird to me. This is how our environment ruins us. Recognition for me now feels like someone showing up late to my party after I’ve cleaned up the place. Delayed emotional pay off feels out of sync.
There is a flip-side to these dismissal trains, hate, undermining, created a quiet competence where by time you find out who and what I am, I’ve already moved on from that and evolved into other self definitions. My field is also not that competitive, people write most of the stuff I do as gimmick because they don’t understand how it works.
I am currently working on a blockchain Tekles.Online and DAO community project.
If you want to understand how great a feat these projects are… try doing it yourself.
I remember the first time I attempted a smart contract. I’ve since praised people with crypto finance and cryptographic skills.
Ain’t no way… same level of admiration I have for Deep Learning engineers. God-like. Being smart and finding smarter people is the quickest way to know you aren’t that smart. Tech people deserve the millions and billions they earn.
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