Albert Einstein once wrote, “Everyone is a genius. If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
Throughout my life, I have been lucky enough to stumble upon several geniuses disguised as ordinary, yet extraordinary people who have inspired me more than they probably realize.
My high school best friend and I met under unlikely circumstances. We didn’t really run with the same crowd at the time. We had nothing in common. He was a big, burly dude on the football team and an average student at best more interested in sports than school. I was not what I would consider athletic, but an A student floating along under the radar. I was not unpopular, but by no means did I run with the popular crowd. My clothes, hair, nor demeanor would allow for that.
We were always both early to school and by default we just started talking because no one else was around. Oddly enough, we made eachother laugh (a common theme among my closest friendships) and unexpectedly formed a bond. His name is Jason Miller, whom I referred to and still do, as “Miller”.
His mom (“Mama Miller”) made me pajamas every year for Christmas, his younger brother (Steve-o) and I traded jabs at eachother like siblings and my parents always warmly welcomed Miller into our home. I remember my first heartbreak. My high school boyfriend of a whopping two months who I was madly in love with broke up with me. Miller was the first one I called and he came over right away with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chubby Hubby (my favorite) and just let me cry.
He ended up starting his college career in upstate New York to study forestry and I went to the University of New Hampshire. We visited each other a couple of times our freshman year. His stay at his first college was short-lived and he ended up moving back home and started taking classes at the local community college. I recall visiting him and he showed me a picture of a drawing he made in a landscape architecture class he was taking. His eyes lit up and it was a side of him I had never seen. I had never known him to ever be enthusiastic about anything related to academia. But this was different. He went on to transfer to the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he received his degree in Landscape Architecture.
Fast forward, Miller is now married to a wonderful woman with four kids, has trained for and run three marathons raising thousands of dollars for charity, and now has his own landscape architecture firm, J Miller Landscape Architecture.
If you had told me in highschool Miller would be running a successful landscape architecture firm, running marathons and raising four kids, I would have told you you were out of your mind. Miller being an average student had more to do with his disinterest in the subjects we were studying, rather than his ability. Average student? Perhaps. Average person? Not by a long shot.
These are the type of people who inspire me. The people who face adversity, take it and mold into something productive and find their own genius.
We all have a genius. What is yours?
(This post turned ridiculously long describing all of the imperfectly perfect genuises in my life, so to help prevent you guys from going cross eyed or stop reading altogether, I’m breaking this post up into segments).
What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid? 