Category: psychology

The Fragile Flame: When Genius Burns Out 

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“He got so smart he went crazy like that!” the regulars at The Family Liquor Store said about a fellow patron named David Hauser, and they always snapped when they said “That!” to punctuate the word. They didn’t just think he was so smart, and he went crazy, they thought there was a direct link between the two. They believed there was an intellectual peak, and that David Hauser accidentally crossed it. I believed them too. I believed them because I was young, extremely naïve, and susceptible to suggestion, especially when it came from adults who knew David Hauser, and his story, far better than I did. The problem for me, decades later when I reevaluated this situation in an article, was that these adults was that they were alcoholics.

“I work hard, and I play hard,” they would say when someone would confront them about their drinking. They did work hard, no one doubted that. When they would go into the details of what they did in a day, we would cringe. As for the playing, I didn’t see much of that. I saw them sit in their chair, and they all had their chair, drinking high-octane alcohol at their favorite watering hole, The Family Liquor Store. Then they’d drink impressive amounts of that high-octane fuel to fuel the stories they all told about one another, and when I write impressive, I’m talking from the perspective of a teenager who considered a tolerance for alcohol impressive.

The article that I wrote nearly a decade ago, A Simplicity Trapped in a Complex Mind, poked fun at how naïve I was to believe so many of the wild stories these people would tell. I also poked fun at their “intellectual peak” theory, in that article, and how it pertained to David Hauser. Now, after all this time, decades after my days in The Family Liquor Store, and nearly a decade after mocking myself for being so naïve as to believe them, I’m going to attempt to execute a very difficult and rather painful 360-degree flip on this matter for your reading pleasure. I’m going to admit that those raging alcoholics, who probably killed a warehouse full of brain cells downing their drink of choice, were almost 100% correct all along.    

Before doing so, I’d like to break down the fourth wall that stands between us, look out at you and ask, doesn’t this idea that there is an intellectual peak, a maximum capacity of knowledge, or some kind of line of demarcation, a “Here, there be Dragons” spot on the mental map of the prefrontal cortex that we dare not cross, seem like something Hans Christian Andersen or the Brothers Grimm would write up? It did to me when I wrote that article on it nearly a decade ago.

I didn’t question them at the time, as I said, because for all the damage they did to their brain with the daily dose of the deadly, they were worldly types who had so many more experiences in life than I had. I think all I said was, “What?” with a scrunched-up face.

“All I can tell you is he had the most brilliant brain anyone who knew him had ever encountered one day, and he was talking to imaginary friends in the corner of our friendly, Family Liquor Store the next, just like that!” they said. “From what I heard, it was almost that immediate.” 

As naïve as I was, I couldn’t shake my skepticism entirely. As much as I liked being around these patrons, they were basically the losers of life, and their goal in life was to try to find some way to even the scales with those who succeeded. “Hey, you want to read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, or any of the Russian authors, be my guest,” they basically said. “All I can say is be careful, because I knew this guy named David Hauser who got so smart he went nuts, like that! I’m not going to tempt fate like that. If you want to do it, go ahead, fart around and find out.” 

They didn’t say that exactly, but they did warn me about “Trying to get so smart.” These warnings, just on the face of it, sounded like something a Will Farrell dumb guy character might say to someone everyone considered smart. Yet, modern neurologists now suggest there might be a thread between genius and madness. They say a mind diving too deep into truth could slip over the edge. It’s not only possible, they suggest, it’s plausible. 

To be fair to the drunks, they spoke to David Hauser’s ex-wife, when she occasionally came down to The Family Liquor Store to “drag my deadbeat ex-husband out of the store,” and they said she told them “Everything there was to know” about her ex-husband. To be fair to me when I wrote that article, I was questioning why I ever believed the secondhand information from a bunch of alcoholics, whose primary source was an embittered ex-wife. Plus, we were all regular joes who had no medical background, or any other level of expertise to back up what we were discussing. The fact that they were daily drinkers of hard liquor suggests that not only had they already killed off so many brain cells that their assessment of the situation was clouded, but that their fears of contracting some sort of mental illness were probably a little more familiar to them. As the writers at Mental Health Foundation suggest, “Alcohol problems and mental ill health are closely linked.” 

We know that we’re just as susceptible to some form of mental illness as David Hauser. We know that hitting our head just wrong in an accident, or having the wrong genes can lead to some form of mental illness, but can a beautiful mind, a genius, who pushes himself so hard that he crosses some imaginary line, ostensibly called an intellectual peak, fracture “just like that!” and fall to madness? To illustrate this theory, let’s switch the frame to the physical. Is it possible for a pole-vaulter to get injured while trying a jump heretofore considered beyond his capacity. Of course, we can all understand that. Why is it so difficult to imagine the same thing could happen to a man who overtaxes his prefrontal cortex to the point that he gets stuck in overdrive. It’s different but similar, but it’s so hard to wrap our minds around. Observers, familiar with Einstein, claimed he lost his sense of time when obsessing over one of his theories, and those familiar with Newton claim he was known to forget to eat. Would we search medical journals to come up with an apt description of that behavior, or would we just call it tunnel vision? Whatever we call it, we get the image of a piano wire that is tuned too tight, until it snaps “just like that.”

Here’s where we complete the painfully embarrassing 360-degree flip. Those raging alcoholics who “played too hard,” from the comfort of their chair, espousing nonsense about an“intellectual peak,” they were more correct than they probably even knew, and science backs them up. Some now theorize that the genius of John Nash, that led to creative and intellectual breakthroughs, could’ve led to a dopamine overload that could’ve tied into a heightened dopamine sensitive that resulted in a case of schizophrenia. Leonardo da Vinci chased brilliance in hypnagogia, flirting with sleep deprivation’s dark side. Ada Lovelace wrestled numbers and despair in equal measure. We can find examples of anything, anywhere in history, to prove a point, but how anecdotal are they? If we dug deeper, would we find more examples of less heralded minds slipping over the edge? Are these examples of a phenomenon that awaits us all if we dig too deep, or are they evidence of how different each individual mind is? We all have different strengths and vulnerabilities, and some minds might just more susceptible to brief flashes of brilliance followed by a flame out. Perhaps, the examples of this phenomenon suggest that, if nothing else, we might never fully understand the full extents of the complexities of the human brain in our lifetime.

We all envision these geniuses as superheroes, and their insight that reshaped our world as superpowers, but their thoughts, like ours, are tethered to very human brains with all the same frailties, vulnerabilities, and breaking points. Is it possible, or even plausible, that that which fuels extraordinary cognition (intense focus, pattern recognition, relentless curiosity) could also push these geniuses toward collapse. By weaving together cutting-edge neuroscience and the raw, personal stories of brilliant minds, do we uncover a paradox that suggests that the brighter the flame is the faster it could flicker out?

It just seemed so irrational to me, when, nearly a decade ago, I wrote that article that scoffed at the drunken tales of direct links between David Hauser, his intellectual peak, and his roller coaster-like crash into the depths of mental illness. It still seems like dumb people knowledge that we often share at bars to say, “See, see, they’re really not that much better than us. They’re human after all.” After gaining even further distance to comment on me, commenting on me, I will now complete my 360-degree flip with the admission that I probably never should’ve questioned the drunks and their drunken analysis. They were almost 100% right, all along. I’m still not sure what I learned, unlearned, or relearned, but I think I now know enough to know what I don’t know, even though I really don’t know what that means. The one thing I have learned, after chasing the idea of how chasing an idea can lead to madness is that chasing an idea can lead to madness. So, maybe I’ve inadvertently answered my question after all.

Tesla’s Pigeon

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“I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.” –Nikola Tesla.

I’ll go ahead and leave the discussion of whether Nikola Tesla is the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) or a GOAT to those with far more knowledge on the subject, but if any individual embodied the spirit of a domesticated bezoar ibex, descending from the Zagros and Taurus mountains to join humanity’s ranks, it would be Nikola Tesla.

Some skeptics dismiss the reverence for Tesla, saying, “I wouldn’t call him the GOAT.” Their argument? “He was first, I’ll give you that. He discovered how to harness alternating current, enabled wireless communication, pioneered remote control, and achieved countless other feats that revolutionized humanity, but,” and here’s where they make their c’mon! faces, “don’t you think someone else would have come up with all of that eventually?”

This is where we’re at, apparently. We’ve grown so accustomed to enjoying the fruits of genius that we downplay the achievements themselves. In today’s world, the process of celebrating greatness often involves systematically dismantling it. We begin by humanizing our icons—making their lives relatable and their quirks amusing—to draw in readers. We peel back the layers of their accomplishments, not to marvel at them but to suggest that anyone else, given the chance, might have done the same. We present witty but reductive “but-did-you-knows” about their flaws, as though to bridge the gap between their brilliance and our everyday mediocrity.

We build them up just to tear them down, all to feel better about ourselves.

“See, Henrietta Bormine, my wife? That Tesla guy wasn’t so great. He had outdated ideas about [insert pet issue here]. I could have achieved what he did—anyone could’ve, really, if they put in the effort.”

This is what we do now.

The thing about these “Anyone could’ve done it” arguments is that they’re almost impossible to defeat. Perhaps, with the same dedication—those mythical 10,000 hours—someone could have achieved what Tesla, Einstein, or da Vinci did. Most discoveries, inventions, and breakthroughs lose their superhuman qualities over time. Who invented the television set? “Someone would have eventually.” Who invented the microwave? “Was there an inventor?” Who invented the toaster. “Boring.” The next question is if anyone could’ve invented these things why didn’t they? Another factor that makes these arguments almost impossible to defeat is the idea that we cannot remove the geniuses from the timeline to test their theory.

This debate also leads me to the question I have when anyone drops a GOAT on someone spectacular, what separated the genius from their competition? Was a man like Nikola Tesla simply a right time, right place type of guy? How many people, in his era, were racing to explore the lengths of man’s ability to harness and manipulate electricity for human needs and eventual usage?

When we were kids, we thought Benjamin Franklin invented electricity. I don’t know how we twisted that story in such a manner, but it wasn’t long before a representative from the nerdy brainiacs set up straight. “Think about how foolish that sounds … How does a person invent electricity? He just advanced the idea that it could be harnessed, and some even debate that notion. They suggest that numerous others were conducting similar experiments. think there were a number of people messing around with experiments and displays of harnessing electricity, but Franklin was just the most famous person to put his name to such theories, and his fame and notoriety put all of those long-standing theories on the map.”

Tesla’s name belongs on the timeline of scientific advancements in electricity, but his achievements don’t stand in isolation. His legacy is interwoven with the work of predecessors, peers, and successors whose names are far less known. And here’s the ultimate question: How many “relatively anonymous figures” from history accomplished even a fraction of what Tesla did? For the sake of argument, let’s call this unsung hero “Todd Callahan,” because it feels like the quintessential everyman name for such musings.

This fictional Todd Callahan grew up much like Nikola Tesla—a curious science enthusiast who stood out as the smartest person anyone in his area had ever known. They dubbed Todd an “uncommon genius.” While other kids spent their afternoons throwing balls in open fields, Todd was tinkering with stuff. When other boys his age played with the toys, Tesla and Todd tore theirs apart. They enjoyed destroying stuff as much as every other young boy, but this wasn’t destruction for distruction’s sake. They did it to rebuild the toys, and they destroyed these toys and rebuilt them so often that they developed an understanding for mechanics in a way that set them on the path to innovate and manipulate the natural world.

Todd’s brilliance was evident early, earning him both admiration and envy from those around him. His neighbors marveled at his genius, and perhaps some resented it. Even the tenured professor, who encountered hundreds of bright students every year and would’ve scoffed at GOAT-like superlatives, privately admitted to his colleagues that Todd Callahan was special.

How many Todd Callahans existed during Tesla’s time, and what distinguished them from each other? Was Tesla, as an adult, more daring, more imaginative, or simply more willing to embrace failure and learn from it? We could say D) all of the above, but the most vital factors in Tesla’s journey to success might have been the simplest of all: hard work, patience, and time.

Time, above all, may have been the decisive factor separating Nikola Tesla from the Todd Callahans of history. Tesla devoted his life—every ounce of energy, thought, and purpose—to science. While this now feels like a cliché description we could apply to many “almost Teslas” of history, it’s worth considering its weight. Imagine mentioning at a party, “Nikola Tesla devoted all of his energy, his time, and his thoughts to science.” The likely response? A collective yawn or polite indifference. It’s not the kind of revelation that stuns a crowd—it’s too broad, too general to feel significant.

But for Tesla, it wasn’t just a statement; it was a truth that defined his life. As Petar Ivic wrote, “Tesla’s only love, inseparable and sincere, was science.”

We probably have to add terms like ‘inseparable’ and ‘sincere’ to capture attention, because every major figure in history devoted themselves to something. The modern adjective we drop on someone so devoted to the particulars of their craft is gym rat. Judging by descriptions of Nikola Tesla’s physique, he never spent time in a gym, but the analogy holds true when we learn that he spent so much of his free time in life in labs and various other enclosed rooms that skin cancer was probably never one of Tesla’s concerns.

Even suggesting that Tesla probably spent a majority of his life in small rooms, testing various ideas and experiments probably doesn’t move the needle much, but the difference between Nikola Tesla and the various Todd Callahans of human history is that Todd Callahan was a normal man driven by normal needs, and normal wants and desires. Todd wanted to achieve as much as Tesla did in the fields of science, but as some point, the man wanted to go home. He sacrificed a lot in the name of science, but he loved to fish and hunt on weekends, and he loved playing card games with the fellas. Todd was a normal man who loved science, but he also loved women. He dated a variety of women, until he found his true love, and they settled down to have a family, a dog named Scruffy, and a white picket fence to keep Scruffy and the kids from harm.

Tesla refrained from these normal pursuits in life, fearing that they would take away, or diminish, his pursuit of steadily advancing the science of electricity. We could say that Nikola Tesla refrained from pursuing a sense of human wholeness, or a sense of completion, but we could also say that was his edge.

“I do not believe an inventor should marry,” Tesla said. “A married man is precluded from devoting himself to his work. Therefore, I have chosen to remain unmarried and to pursue my work.” Tesla believed celibacy allowed him to maintain acute focus and channel his energy entirely on his inventions, and as opposed to most science nerds, Nikola Tesla did, in fact, have list of women who were all but beating down his door.

Nikola and His Pigeons

Nikola Tesla took the “hard work, patience and time” devotion to his craft so seriously that he tried as hard as he could to void his life of distractions, physical and otherwise. The only vice, it appears he had, was an utter devotion to pigeons. He could spend hours at a time feeding them at the park. In his pursuit of fowl friendship, he occasionally encountered an injured one. When that happened, he brought them back to his hotel room to nurse them back to health. He was known to leave his hotel room window open to allow pigeons full access to his room whenever they needed. He also had a habit of asking the chef of the hotel to prepare a special mix of seeds for his pigeons to, we can only guess, gain him an unfair advantage among those seeking friendship and more from the pigeon population.

The one thing that those of us who know little about birds, and nothing of pigeons, know is that birds are not what we’d call discriminating when it comes to where they decide to relieve themselves. Bird enthusiasts suggest it is “difficult but possible to potty train a bird,” but there are no indications that Nikola Tesla, a germaphobe before being a germaphobe was cool, spent any of his precious time on Earth devoted to that cause. Thus, we can only guess that Tesla’s hotel room wouldn’t make it in a Better Homes and Garden feature article, and we have to imagine that if that list of potential suitors, mentioned above, got one look, or whiff, of his hotel room it might diminish his demand. The historical record suggests that this was also one of the reasons why some of the hotels he lived in gave him the boot.

Nikola Tesla was willing to sacrifice all of that for an afternoon spent in the company of his favorite beings on the planet, and in the midst of all that, Nikola Tesla found true love for the first time in his life. As with any person who surrounds themselves with people, places and things, we eventually whittle them down to a focus of our attention and love. Tesla found that in one of the pigeons who regularly kept company with him, a white pigeon with some grey highlights. He declared that this pigeon would find him, no matter where he was, and spend time around him. Eventually, as with all pigeons, this one fell to an illness. Tesla took her back to his room and tried to cure her illness, but this man of miracles, could not save his one true love in life. It broke his heart, as it breaks all of our hearts when a beloved pet dies, but Tesla was so broken hearted that some suggest he experienced such a feeling of hopelessness, and such a general sense of purposeless, that he died days later of a broken heart. We’ve all heard tales of an individual who dies shortly after their spouse, and that appears to be what happened here, with Tesla and his beloved pigeon.

Before he died, Tesla informed others that his beloved pigeon visited him on the day of her demise, and “a white light shone from her eyes, brighter that anything I’ve generated with electrical machinery.” Shortly after her death, Tesla told friends that his life’s work was finished.

This story is used by some outlets to diminish Nikola Tesla, and the Tesla quote they use is that he loved a “pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me.” The intent is to suggest he was such a wacky scientist that couldn’t properly manage human relations, so he devoted his passion to this rat with wings. It’s funny on the face of it, but how many of us “love” a dog so completely that when the little fella gets run over by a car, we’re broken hearted? As Jules, from Pulp Fiction would argue, “But, dog’s got personality, [and] personality goes a long way.” It’s true, but when they die, we cry and make damn fools out of ourselves in a way that those who witness it will never forget or forgive. “I’m sorry, but it’s a dumb dog,” they say with derision. How many have the same passionate love for a cat, who in many ways fails to return love in the demonstrable ways a dog can. Some love a pig, a rat, and a snake in much the same way, even though we can’t understand how anyone could develop a quid pro quo relationship with such animals.

Is it a little quirky any time a grown man develops such passionate feelings for a bird, but this happened late in Tesla’s life when we can only imagine he lost much of his drive, passion, and that almost unquenchable thirst for accomplishment was probably quenched, and that probably created a void in which he began to focus on how lonely he was in life. Some part of him may have also regretted not seeking human companionship more in life, but he may have felt that he waited too long, and that the time for all that had long-since past. As such, he may have sought an unconditional friendship that allowed these pigeons to become repositories for his love. Anyone who has read about Nikola Tesla knows he was a passionate man, and when he reached a point where he felt he accomplished everything he wanted to in life, he looked for more tangible ways to express his sense of love. I doubt Nikola Tesla went to the park bench, looking for the type of love only a pigeon can provide. I’m sure it just happened, and we can’t control who we fall in love with.

You Do What you Do

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“You’re basically crushing on a teenager,” Susie said to conclude her accusation that we were flirting with our teenage server. It wasn’t true, but it was funny, and all insults are not created equal. Some hit the soft spots we spend most of our time trying to hide from spectators, and some are just plain funny. Funny gets the competitive hackles up high, and if we don’t hit back, she owns the funny.

“You’re a couple of dirty old men,” she added. We spoke to this server the way we spoke to every woman who served us food and drink. This young server engaged in our playful banter, and she laughed while doing it. We laughed, everyone laughed, and we all had a good time doing it. This was our routine. If we had a server who was a homely, senior citizen with a hairy wart on the end of her nose, we would’ve engaged her in playful banter to try to make her laugh, so we can laugh, and everyone could have a great time. Unless the server happened to be male, we were consistently playful with everyone who served us food and drink. This particular waitress just happened to be a beautiful, young blonde who wore a crop top that exposed her washboard stomach, and she had a great set of teeth. 

We could’ve laid out our “completely consistent with our character” defense, but that likely would’ve devolved into a tired “Nuh uh!”/“Yes huh!” debate. We could’ve called Susie’s age into question and asked her if she was jealous that she was no longer a young, hot body that old men might want to entertain intermittently for a couple hours. Attempting to reset the parameters in this manner can fall under a petty and mean umbrella, however, and Susie’s challenge was not a confrontational, mean-spirited challenge of our character, but an entertaining way for her to belittle the men around her. If you step out of that parameter and become unnecessarily defensive, not only will you face the humiliating “I was just joshing,” but you also reveal something weird and uncomfortable about yourself. No, when someone like Susie hits you with something funny like this, you join in. 

Even if such a comment makes us angry, and especially if it makes us angry, we join in, and attempt to outdo them there, in their spot and the frame they’ve created in the moment. If you let it go, you lose; if you try to “Well, what about you?” them, you lose; and it you get too defensive, you lose. The best course of action is to play with them on the playing field they’ve created and try to beat them there. 

“We’re old, she’s young, I get it,” I said to Susie. “I agree with everything you’re saying about us and our relationship here, but she has belly exposed.” 

“What does that have to do with anything?” Susie asked.

“The exposed belly changes everything,” I said. “All conditions being equal, you take out the exposed belly, and she’s just another woman who is far too young for us to even engage in polite conversation. The exposed belly changes the chemistry and circuitry, or for you mystical types, the interiority, of the adult male mind. It’s science.”

“She’s probably eighteen-years-old,” Susie said to further her admonishments. “She’s young enough to be your granddaughter.”  

“Fair enough,” I said. “But that crop top she’s wearing exposes the fact that she has a washboard stomach.”

“And that she’s eighteen.”

“If you study your science, you’d know what the exposed washboard belly of a teenager does to the chemistry and circuitry of the male brain. If I reach the point where you begin to question my level of brain activity, perform all of the traditional, medical tests, but if everything else fails, walk a female washboard stomach in front of me. If I don’t respond in anyway, pull the plug.”  

***

“I’ll let you try a little bit of this drink, but if you don’t like it, you cannot make a face,” I say when I let someone try something I love. I didn’t invent the drink I want them to try, write the song, the book, or make the video I want them to watch, but for some reason, it’s so important to me that they like it too. I don’t own shares of the company or have any personal stake in the success of the product, but it’s my opinion that they made something delicious, interesting, and I want to share that temporary, nebulous bond with you. When they make that face it suggests that the drink is absolutely disgusting, it hurts in some strange way that is impossible to describe to anyone who doesn’t share my brain with me.

“I don’t care,” we say, “I still like it.” That’s a front, a BS front that we create to hide our pain. There is some element of truth in it, however, for we will continue to drink it, listen to it, or read it, and we will continue to enjoy it in all the ways we did before they made that face, but it still hurts that they don’t like it the way we do.

“How can you drink that sludge?” some say, further down the line, to compound their insult. They flip the page on us by somehow making us defend our appreciation of the product we once wanted to share with them. It’s almost as if they know we have some vulnerability on this subject, and somewhere deep in the recesses this feels like a violation of some bond that we once wanted to share with them. 

***

“Who do you think is going to win the big game?” 

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t know. I don’t know, no one does, it hasn’t even started yet, but we all sort of play this game with one another to guess who is going to win. If you’re wrong, no one cares. No one cares if you’re right either, as a matter of fact. It’s just a little game we adults play with one another, and no one remembers who said what five seconds after the game ends.”  

***

The material in this article is not meaningful, important or germane. Was it brilliant, hilarious, or groundbreaking? No, it is what I do. Some have natural gifts for storytelling, others have talent, but the rest of us have to work through it, for it, and to it. At some point in between, we reach a point where we can only do what we do. We all have talents, limitations, and everything in between. “Explore,” I say. “Eat it, drink it, learn it, live it, love it.”  

Once we dig past that crusty superficial layer, it’s easier to dig, but if we dig too far, we hit that which is pleasing to the eye and ear. It’s a purposeless depth with an artificial feel to it, and it feels fine to write it, but when we read it, we know it ruins the article. When we learn to avoid such depths, the reader might say, “This is great and all, but what do you want me to do with it?” There’s a beginning, an arc, and a conclusion, but to the reader it’s not everything it could be. To which we the author responds with the tired but true, “It is what it is.”

What is our definition of success? How do we know when we’ve achieved completion? Next question, what do we do when we don’t? We develop excuses for failing to achieve the maximum, but another point follows that point where we realize that we probably weren’t D) all of the above. We may have been A) and C), but we were lazy, scared, intimidated, or not ambitious enough to put a foot on the next rung up on the ladder. It might be one of those things, all of them or none, but I wonder how many suffer from the ‘I just never thought of myself as one of those guys’ mindset. We’ve all heard about the definition of success, and we love the general discussions of one guy succeeding over another, but how many of us know that we’re going to succeed within a structured format, regardless the obstacles they place before us? This concept struck me when Jackie and Jody informed me that they were both anchors for competing local news networks.

“How do you even think you’re capable of such a thing?” I asked them. I knew Jackie on an intimate, friendship level, and I spoke with Jody on an almost-daily basis. They were my people, and I couldn’t believe that any one of my people could go beyond dreaming of such things. 

“It’s a low-rent, very local network,” Jackie said. “You’ve seen it. The production value of my broadcast is zilch. It’s about two notches above what some guy filming himself in his mom’s basement. It’s nothing to write home to mom about.” It was to me. It was a stratosphere I never even considered before, and I didn’t think I’d ever even meet someone who thought like they did. I don’t know if Jackie and Jody had a better support system growing up, or if some people just believe in themselves more than others. I don’t know, but I’ve met a number of people I life who succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, and they never thought as much of it as I did. They dreamed higher. We could grow frustrated by it, develop excuses for our inability to succeed, or just keep doing what we do.