This too shall not pass

— This post is dedicated to my friend. I can’t wait to see what you contribute to the world. —

I have a very terrible stutter. Most people don’t notice it because I either don’t talk long enough for them to notice it, or I swear a lot during conversations (which I have found to stop my stuttering). It’s something I was born with but never received formal treatment for as my parents assumed it would go away. I became particularly frustrated with it today as I was pitching to a potential investor and stuttered on practically every word. Needless to say I felt embarrassed, stupid and frustrated. On this particular day however, I had had enough.

All my life I have worked to overcome this weakness. I’d say I have been successful at it so far (I have spoken at a number of ‘big’ places, including TedX, which I also stammered in). But today I felt different. The difference being a recent conversation I had with a friend. He made me wonder if perhaps my approach wasn’t serving me as well as it could be.

My friend in question is brilliant to say the least. He’s from South London, but managed to get into Oxford and UCL, extremely talented in chemistry and maths, and is a self taught pianist. He also has bipolar disorder: experiencing severe manic, depressive and psychotic episodes. He had recently decided he was going to stop viewing his bipolar as a weakness to be overcome and start seeing it as a strength he could tap into. He then went on to discuss possible ways he could implement this (e.g take advantage of his manic episodes and see what he could discover). Things that other people really can’t do if they don’t have bipolar disorder. I thought it was brilliant to say the least.

I had spent so much time fighting my stutter, that it didn’t even cross my mind to work with it. This naturally made me think about others who had perfected this way of thinking, Kanye West being one of them. Take for example his bipolar. He has often referred to it as his super power and I can see why. Who else could have done all that he has done with such confidence?

It got my friend and I thinking, why does society push us to be “normal”? What does “normal” mean and who said it was good? In the case of his bipolar, the solution often presented is medication which he hates because it numbs the good as well as the bad. In my case, a stutter is obviously not comparable to bipolar, but my depression comes somewhat close and my feelings echo his in that regard. I am not trying to romanticise these conditions or say that there aren’t severe negative aspects to it, but I do think we can find some positives in them if we look hard enough. In my friend’s case it causes him to go ferociously deep and wide into a subject, allowing him to explore a subject from all angles. In my case, my depression has given me a determination, ambition and risk appetite that I couldn’t have gotten without it. My friend and I both asked ourselves “Would we trade these weaknesses, to be normal?” We both decided we wouldn’t and both agreed that optimising for “normal” isn’t great for the individual or society. Instead we should find a way to mitigate the downsides of these weaknesses, whilst keeping the upside. (Funnily enough we both decided the problem was the definition and measurement of normal. Who decides this and why? If we could fix that, then these things probably wouldn’t be an issue.)

My aim here is not to inspire you, but rather to get you to question yourself just as I have. Before you start to plan how you will overcome this weakness of yours, first ask yourself “why?”. What are you optimising for and who said it was right? Perhaps your weakness is a strength and you just need to look at it from a less “normal” point of view. Fortunately for you, your weaknesses probably aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, so you have time to figure it out.

This too shall not pass!