by Aishwarya » Wed Oct 16, 2002 11:24 pm
A fourteen year old lad called Albert, clumsy in appearance, used to regularly fail in physics and math at school and was declared unfit in the realm of science by his teachers. Roughly sixteen years later he sent shock waves along the entire science community by proposing a concept called the “Theory of Relativity”, and he was proclaimed a genius. A short, stout, ill-kept, fifteen-year-old Indian called Ramanujam failed to get his formal education, but with his obsession for Mathematics, recreated in two years, an entire two hundred years of European mathematics. He was called a genius.<br><br>
People, what is this quality that lifts a certain individual like Einstein or Ramanujam skyscrapers high above the rest of us?<br><br>
What is genius?<br><br>
This question has always fascinated mankind. In fact, after Einstein’s death scientists put his brain in a preservative for twenty-five years to find out what made his brain so special. So, is the term genius confined only to great intelligence? Shankuntala Devi, a human computer who can perform great mathematical calculations in a jiffy, is called a prodigy (but not a genius), because she may be an amazing calculator but is not a creator of amazing concepts. If being prodigious was being genius, that would God’s injustice to other men by bestowing gifts to only certain people.<br><br>
Geniuses are skilled, but more than the skill, they have the passion - a passion for the work, for the job, on hand, so intense that no force on earth can stop it. They dare to question, they are courageous. People like Galileo were ready to lay down their lives to stick to their idea. They realized that there’s no particular virtue in doing things the way they have been done before. And it is this realization which is given the term creativity. They were creative; they lay stress on individuality because they felt that individuality was the essence of mankind.<br><br>
It wasn’t said for nothing by Leonardo da Vinci, the greatest genius ever, that “it\'s 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration“. Geniuses inspire millions of people. And what do they inspire?<br><br>
That success cannot be achieved without perspiration, without toil, without sweat. Geniuses love problems, they love failures. They feel that leading a life without any difficulties is like having a chocolate without chewing it. We get the fill but not the taste. Geniuses taste life, friends, unlike us who are merely content with having the fill.<br><br>Geniuses tend to see things with the wandering vision of a child than with the tired eyes of an adult. They can see the particular in the general, which is the foundation of a GENIUS. They can penetrate into reality and present it in a totally new fashion. Newton could find a new uniformity of nature from old observations. Shakespeare could wring new meanings from old ones; Mozart could express new moods from old notes.<br><br>But the key characteristic of a genius is his concentration. Look at this guy who carries the hope of a billion people, a guy who knows he has to perform for his team to win. Suddenly he gets the shock that his father, a most dear one, has passed away. There could be no greater loss, there\'s nothing more untimely than that, and he goes back to his country and attends the funeral. And before even the tears have dried up, he decides to come back and join the team, and not only plays, but hits a swashbuckling century with shots straight from the manual, lifts his bat and dedicates his century to his father. After the match is over he goes back to his hotel room and cries all the night. This also my message to all the anti-Tendulkar guys - if this is not genius, what else is? This guy could marshall of his conscious and unconscious energies for a single purpose, stay focused in spite of all the hype and all the trauma and still deliver the goods.<br><br> Geniuses are not eccentric, they are not people totally different, and they don’t speak a different language. In fact, the best point about geniuses is that they are marvellously human. They speak to us only with their deeds - with their ideas, but also for us. They have a vision and inspire us to have one. Subconsciously, humankind has always benefited from their steps. Let me remind you of the experiment being conducted on Einstein\'s brain. After 25 years scientists concluded that it was no different from anybody else\'s brain and dumped it. Nature can never be so prejudiced, friends, to gift someone with a greater brain. Genius just stands for the glorification of the human qualities of will power, of dedication, of diligence. <br><br>
Genius is us, maybe a little magnified. In genius we see something of our own selves - a thousand percent brighter, wiser and more creative than we are - but us nonetheless.
Perhaps it was God’s way of saying, \"My son, in your pursuit for perfection, you need somebody among you as a role model, a guiding force - get inspired by him, and don\'t give up the pursuit. Then you will not only be glorifying me, you creator, but will soon be at par with that guiding force you call a genius.\"