The Gifted Grift

From the age of eight I was placed in accelerated learning classes and told I was Gifted and Talented. GT courses again and again reiterated the idea I was special and I believed it wholeheartedly. I thought I was smarter than everybody. I was perceptive: I saw truths other people ignored. I thought I was better, more capable, quicker witted, sharper tongued, more logically coherent and just superior to pretty much everyone, even my GT peers. My success was assured.  My confidence in my success came from movies and books, rap songs and other capitalist pop culture promises of perfect romances and limitless wealth; it came from GT programs which told me I could be anything and which were relatively easy for me to navigate given the structures of a scholastic environment; it came from the fact I was pretty good at most of the things I bothered to try. By 22, I assumed virtually boundless capabilities were innate in me just waiting to blossom.  My success would be as glorious as it was completely inevitable and predestined. That’s no exaggeration, that’s honestly how I thought. What a fucking moron. I drank a lot back then, which probably helped fuel my delusions of grandeur. By my early 30s, not surprisingly, something shifted in this mindset. I still believed myself to be extraordinary because I had an educational pedigree and have you met me?, but this view of myself was starting to be challenged by the Real World.  (The world not the TV show).

All of my youthful distinctions added up to a life which felt unimpressive and, most troubling, my life was a lot more hard work than I ever pictured myself doing. I was gifted and talented, shouldn’t all this be easier? I’d slaved over two novels but they didn’t sell. I’d been in bands that played shows and recorded music, but you couldn’t buy our album and I never got to tour. I had an MFA but I wasn’t teaching in my field. I’d been paid to write screenplays and worked long, difficult hours, but the scripts weren’t produced.  My ego felt injured by these disappointments so I grabbed even harder to the idea I was special and became The Worst. I corrected people’s grammar, i fixated on small little ways I was superior to anyone else who was experiencing success, I did mental back-flips to convince myself I was right in the face of objective evidence to the contrary, I was overly critical to try to make myself feel better. None of it worked. My anger and despair only mounted. I found myself grasping for some fleeting sense of superiority in order to continue to deny the reality which was becoming more apparent everyday: I. Am. Not. Special.  As a kid, the potential of my vast mind felt like an opportunity but in my early 30s my potential felt a lot more like a burden, like some enormous checklist of things I should be doing with my talents and brain which I could never in a million years possibly complete. I didn’t feel special, I felt like a failure.

It is both convenient and comfortable for me to lash out and blame other people for all the ways my life isn’t what I think it should be.  It’s also fun! American culture promises us that someday everything is going to be okay; it won’t, life ends in death. It promises us we’ll fall in love; we might, but it’s a shitload of work to find a relationship and keep it and love won’t save us because when one is in love or a relationship they’re still the same mess of a person they were before getting involved, now they have someone else’s feelings to manage too!  It tells us we’ll all be financially stable and able to relax some day; we won’t, most Americans don’t have $1,000 for emergencies and will never in their life have the funds to write a $50,000 check and they’ll probably basically work until they die. The dishonesty continue in the classroom, where Rage Against the Machine put it best, "The students' eyes don't perceive the lies bouncing off every fucking wall." The American school system makes learning feel like a burden rather than the lifelong joy it should be and most teachers equip students with skills to take tests and win arguments rooted in fiction rather than teaching them to succeed in the real world. Gifted programs offer students a sheltered existence in which they are told they are special while only interacting with ideals and other idyllic smart people, so these gifted students learn their own sense of entitlement but few of the pragmatic skills they’ll actually need to thrive in life and in fact, the egos these gifted students cultivate by being told they are so special actually become their greatest obstacles to happiness.  My parents filled my head with seemingly limitless loads of bullshit and I’m sure yours did too. While each of these factors played a role in shaping my disappointment with myself, ultimately, getting mad at and blaming other people, the world or institutions for my personal disappointments has been a great way for me to learn what the problem with my life is not.

The problem with my life isn’t a culture full of empty promises or an inadequate school system, those are obstacles for everyone in America.  The problem with my life isn’t gifted programs which taught me the very ideals I resent them for not doing a better job of living. The problem with my life isn’t my parents who did their best but, like most parents, myself included, were inept. The problem with my life isn’t even my life. The problem with my life is how I see my life. My personal expectations for my own success created a situation in which I could never feel successful. Because I thought I was going to be great, the successes I did have - writing two novels, being paid to write screenplays, being in a cool band, dating awesome chicks, having fun friends - felt inconsequential to me.  They dimmed in comparison to my own unrealistic expectations for myself. I didn’t even win a PEN Faulkner Award or an Emmy! I don't think these accolades would have helped me feel successful. I don't know that anything could. I once read an interview with the legendary comedian, filmmaker and novelist Albert Brooks in which he was asked what famous person he identifies with most. (Sorry I can't find the link, this is why you should cite as you write, kids) Albert Brooks, with all his success and accolades, told the interviewer that he feels most like Pete Best, the drummer who was kicked out of the Beatles before they made it big. Even Albert fucking Brooks isn't who he thinks he should be, what possible hope do I have?

As a child who had the label ‘gifted’ bestowed upon him, I’m an extraordinarily privileged person and this privilege, like all privilege, is blinding.  Even now, as a husband, a father, a respected adjunct professor, I teach one of the most popular courses in my college and hold the highest elected office among the adjunct faculty and I still feel like a failure at times because my life doesn’t look the way I think it should.  One of the things privilege blinds me to is how fucking privileged I am. In the grand scheme of things, my life being different than I pictured isn’t really an actual problem because it's mostly a problem I think about when I've just eaten and I'm sitting on my couch doing nothing. The "problem" of “who is Nate DeWitt? Isn’t a problem for anyone anywhere outside my mind and it's something I only worry about when my other basic needs are met.  When my life is calm enough for me to worry about what my life looks like or if I’m who I’m supposed to be - whatever the fuck that means - these moments are, if I’m honest, indicators my life is going great. In truth, these worries and self-doubts are luxuries many people never have the time, calmness or clarity of thought to experience. It’s a luxury to have a moment to grieve the fact I’m not who I dreamed of being. Shit, it was a luxury to go after my dreams at all. Most Americans get bogged down in circumstance and never, ever get to go after theirs, not even for a day, let alone a decade. I should take a breath and say thank you.  I’m happiest when I just get over myself and let go of my expectations. My life doesn’t look like I thought because the life I pictured was an inaccurate facsimile drawn by an idiot. When I remember all the reasons I have to be grateful, I remember what’s most special about being me.