There are all those people who have been told so much that they are weak that they ended up being weak, and there are all those people who have been told that they are strong and dream of being weak from time to time....
I am frankly not an enthusiast of life lessons and optimism. Usually when I read "3 little things you should..." or "5 things I understood for.....I'm running away! So I don't feel like giving lessons. On the other hand, I would like to propose another reading of the tests used in psychology, because a lot of contradictory and absurd information circulates on the famous IQ test, on gifted people, High Potentials and other Zebras. So I'm sticking to it, in my zebra-like way...
I would like to talk to you, zebra reader and your loved ones, who you feel lost in the midst of all this good advice, which is not really good advice. I'd like to tell you that you probably feel different, but you're not that different. And above all, I would like to tell you that you can look for and find allies, but that your best ally will always be yourself.
As a preamble, the metaphor of brushing...
I am a total admirer of the hairdresser's technique for skillfully handling the round brush and the dryer that allows me to leave the stylish and volumized hair salon. I am all the more so because I was convinced for a long time that I was gifted as a handle to redo the beautiful brushing at home. As I am not immensely concerned about my image, I decided that I would never do brushing in my life, and that it would be fine! However, every time I went to the hairdresser's, I was still very annoyed. Damn it! This scholarly brushing gave my face a much better day than I could ever give myself. In front of the ice cream, I was faced with my contradiction. Oh, my God! Horror and damnation! I would at least be as concerned about my image as the Barbie dolls in magazines!
I anticipated so well the falling effect that the mirror will inevitably send me back the next morning that I hardly left the salon I was running to redo myself a shampoo, in order to get rid of this cumbersome image of another version of myself pumped up. Whew!
I worked like this for a very long time, without it bothering me any more than that, I reassure you... Until the day when I told, a little shameful, this habit to a hairdresser. She laughed a lot, which saved me, and she laughed nicely at me, saying that I had little respect for her work and the money it cost me. Well, I said yes, but I don't understand your brushing thing, so what do you want me to do about it? Neither one nor two, here is my hairdresser who starts to give me a brushing class with theory and practical work! I didn't become a brushing pro, no. I've just been less afraid of my round brush and I'm having fun even, from time to time, making a funny face. Enough jouissif, the power of hair, finally...
This whole thing is ridiculous, I admit it, but to look at it more closely, not without interest. I was ridiculous just because I thought,"I'm not good." I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't make much sense to say you're gifted or not. Why imagine, by a magical thought, that we need gifts when it is enough to have the "good teacher" and the motivation to learn what seemed definitively out of reach?
What about the gifted term then? It suggests a supernatural and innate giftedness in everything, hard to believe when you have a little bit of judgment. It refers to the idea that good fairies have looked at our cradle when we know full well that fairies are inventions of fairy tales. It's enough to drive you crazy, isn't it? You, you know that tales are stories, images, metaphors, but very serious people tell you that you have gifts... Extreme poverty... Being aware of its incompleteness is common. Being labeled gifted with that conscience makes your head explode in "But they have cheese instead of the brain, others or do I get nothing?" mode. Feeling constantly that you don't know how to be where you're supposed to be, that you're never understood or that you don't understand anything to others, it's very scary! To be labeled gifted is necessarily to feel like ankles that swell at the same time as being an impostor.
In order to overcome the social misunderstanding of the gifted word, specialists then used the term EIP for Intellectual Early Childhood, and then the term HP for High Potential. These terms may be a little less connotted, but they do not change the situation. The EIP/HP does not need society to know that it has a potential for apprehension of the different world, it lives it. If he cannot help but see it as a difficulty at best, at worst a curse, it is sad. Knowing that you are EIP/HP is nice, but it doesn't give you many keys to know how to deal with your intellectual potential. It's almost as if you had to invent your own model over and over again. Ah! Ah! The good joke! Well, that's not cake!
I don't know what term would have to be invented to reflect reality. In any case, so far, the term zebra has been even worse. Let us return to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, it was used for the first time by a psychologist who became "famous" thanks to them, Jeanne Siaud-Facchin, and to whom it is necessary to recognize the merit of being active for a long time to make known and understand these strange humans to the general public. That's pretty much all I recognize him, but that's another story.
Saying Zebra sounds cooler, that's for sure. It's a reminder that nature produces fun-loving weirdness. And then, it gives the impression that we belong to a referenced species and therefore recognized. We can also think of a community between zebras to feel less isolated. Yes, it does matter!
There's still something bothering me a little bit... To get into the club.