If you're so clever...

How many times have you heard it or one of its endless variations? If you're so clever how come you are not super successful/rich/something? Why do we automatically think that one leads to another, as if life is a logical continuum of cause and effect?

Now here's a good example of how contradictory life can be: the new POTUS (President of the United States, duh!) Mr. Donald Trump has told us all many a time what a smart guy he is and that he has made billions of dollars, so there's the obvious correlation. But here's the strange bit: if he's so clever how come his hairstyle is so weird, quite ridiculous really, and yet he cannot see it? Does his amazing mental capacity consider it a matter so insignificant that it is beneath his amazing capabilities? Or is is the heat of that amazingly active brain that has caused a malfunction in the tricho-function of his head leading to this obvious but unacknowledged disaster? It gets you wondering a bit about all this cleverness stuff...

No one likes to think of themselves as dim, not so clever or even a few sandwiches short of a picnic, do we? Many of us like to believe that we are gifted in some way or other, even smart guys (pace Donald), and site our achievements in academia, business or elsewhere as proof positive of our innate talents and skills. But is it really thus and do the facts bear this out? And should measurable success be the sole proof of our mental abilities, or lack thereof?

So many times in life the results don't necessarily reflect the effort that's gone in to something, yet often we on the outside look and judge purely on results. How many times have we ourselves uttered 'if he/she is so good/clever/whatever how come they're not super successful/made such a mess of it?' Why do we think that things in life happen in a linear and direct way when everywhere around us we can see that this is not necessarily the case? And why is it that even allegedly smart people lose their ability to think when their vanity gets in the way?

A related sentiment to this is, of course, 'if this is such a clever idea, how come nobody has thought of this before/done this/made this product' - this told to many a prospective innovator/inventor by somebody close to them - and very probably often, thereby dampening their creative flair and sometimes even stopping them in their tracks. How on earth do we think the world would ever move forward if we all felt that way?

I suppose it's a natural instinct to want to tear down somebody else's ideas and attack their sense of self worth, especially when they are not basking in the warmth and support of general adulation. Think how James Dyson would have felt when company after company in the vacuum cleaner field laughed in his face when he was trying to flog them his bagless cyclone idea; as soon as they saw him making a success of it, going it alone, they tried to copy him by ripping off his ideas but, alas for them, the wily Mr. Dyson had safeguarded his patents and took them to task. They were all made to pay for using his technology sooner or later and Dyson is the biggest name (and probably the most profitable...) in the industry these days, so who's laughing now? Should we all be dysoning now?

Which leads me to my final gripe, the sharp intake of breath and the 'oooh, no, you cannot do that..' which, uttered mainly but not exclusively by technical people when discussing a new/different way of doing things and who, when quizzed on why not, respond with 'it's not done, it just can't be done that way' but offer no explanation. To this my attitude has always been (and always will be, I have to say) 'I have news for you. Unless you can explain to me why something cannot be done in a certain way clearly and succinctly, that is exactly what we will be doing and how we will be doing it.'

It is always possible that what we have in mind is not thought through properly; a clear explanation  will make this obvious and will be a great help. It is equally possible that a clever idea may be a bit half-baked, and by discussing shortfalls with the originator we can help them perfect it. But it also may be that we're not as clever as we think, or even as everybody else thinks, so we haven't achieved what we thought we could.

On the other hand it's just possible we chose not to, or that life's ups and downs got in the way. Who's to say?

But on the subject of THAT hairstyle...please! Bad idea!