So Stupid You Can’t Help But Succeed
My most important piece of life advice came from a Garfield comic.
In 1982, Jim Davis published this Garfield comic. In it, Garfield, a hater, mocks Odie for achieving something he usually shouldn’t have the ability to do.
Around that time, I was being carted off to a psychologist specialised in children. Dr Silva his name was, if my memory doesn’t fail me. Dr Silva was a soft-spoken, kind yet still very professional man.
Mom took me to Dr Silva because the school they wanted me to go to wasn’t impressed with my motor skills. They recommended I see one before they deemed me capable of receiving an education. Also, for the longest time my parents were actually concerned I was deaf, so therapy seemed like the sensible option.
ADD wasn’t a thing Ecuadorian shrinks knew to look for back in the early 80s, so Dr Silva was already starting off with an incomplete set of tools.
So week in and week out, I’d go in for therapy. My first of many shrinks, which is surprising because I grew up in an environment where people don’t go to see shrinks. Shrinks are for crazy people, and people who can’t get their shit together on their own.
Dr Silva would have me do questionnaires and motor skill exercises. I remember drawing many a line through simple mazes to prove I could stay inside the walls. In hindsight, I was being boxed into a particular way of thinking before I’d lost all baby teeth. The shortest path between points A and B was always gonna be a straight line, but I had to be mindful of the walls when in reality it was just a piece of printed paper.
I remember mom would buy me pork leg sandwiches after each session. I don’t know if that makes my memories of Dr Silva’s sessions more palatable now, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.
Dr Silva, a good man with good intentions, made two terrible mistakes by the time we had completed the “treatment”. He told my mother I had a“gifted” level IQ, and that I would never be able to draw.
Mom relayed the IQ thing to me. That shit would haunt me forever. I was the kid born with The Gift. One should not squander The Gift. One should go on to make Great Things and undertake Big Projects. One should always remember to make use of The Gift.
You can imagine the sort of pressure that put me under.
But mom never told me about the drawing thing. Not even in hidden messages like “maybe you should take up football”.
I never found out I wasn’t supposed to be able to draw, and she never discouraged me from trying. Even with a medical diagnosis to the contrary.
Needless to say I am, to this day, unimpressed with my medical results, and I’ll be seeking a second opinion.
On the same subject, but diametrically opposite, there are things my parents, teachers, and peers discouraged me from doing over the years. As a result, I never managed to climb those trees.
I wanted to be an actor, but I was scoffed at.
There was also that week in 2004 where I told my dad I’d like to go into fashion design, and that was the day I learned how to use a defibrillator.
I wanted to be a detective when I was a kid, but then again I’m glad I was discouraged from doing that, cause I am not cut out for police work. I just really wanted a deerstalker and a magnifying glass.
I was discouraged by my friends in school from getting into an after-school mano-a-mano with the kid that had kicked me in shins. “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?” said Tyler Durden, and to this day I answer “Huh? What?”.
But I can draw. Cause no one ever told me I couldn’t.
Do The Thing
People sometimes tell me “I wish I could draw like you”, but they don’t really mean it. What they wish for is to magically have the ability I developed for years. I’ve doodled in the back of school notebooks since 1989. I didn’t have the best grades, but I could draw a pretty good Simba by the time I graduated high school.
I wasn’t born with any unique skills or talents. That’s just a crutch other people give you. Like a gift no one wants and keeps getting rotated year after year at every family’s Secret Santa.
I trained. Informally, yes, but I trained every day. I don’t remember half the stuff I was supposed to learn in college cause I was drawing. Improving. Failing at drawing and then checking out how other artists do it and copying that.
And I got better.
As a wannabe artist, this comes with the caveat that you will always, always hate the art you produce. I’ve learned to make peace with that.
Same with writing, to be honest. There’s a point where things have to look “good enough” to be published.
But I did it cause I was never discouraged from it.
Stop wishing you could do the thing and just start. It’s hard at first, but if you have the willpower, you’ll be able to climb that tree like Odie did.
Cut out the Garfields in your life that mock you for doing the thing you’re not supposed to have the ability to do. Eliminate the toxic noise.
And do the thing.
I promise you, before long you’ll be able to look back at your own Dr Silva and say: “You were wrong sucker”.
Shoot for the stars. Shoot for the moon. But goddammit, just take that shot.
And when you miss.
Shoot again.
Cause it’s amazing what one can accomplish when one doesn’t know what one can’t do.
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