Against the Current: How Challenges Became Clarity

Against the Current: How Challenges Became Clarity

Like many people, I have a touch of dyslexia. The dyslexic brain functions differently - focusing on minute details is difficult, but seeing the big picture and how all the dots connect comes naturally. That’s why dyslexia is sometimes called "the MIT disease." Engineers need to see how systems interconnect. An airplane must be designed to fly before it ever leaves the ground; there’s no pulling over mid-flight to fix what you didn’t anticipate. dyslexia helped me develop an engineering mindset.

From a young age, my scholastic career was a disaster by conventional measures. Traditional testing focuses on regurgitation - memorizing answers for exams. to this day I get unnecessarily anxious when confronted with a test. But I was filled with questions. Bigger questions. Questions that annoyed instructors who wanted compliance, not curiosity. I was punished for questioning and, as a result, became a very rebellious young man.

Fortunately, I came of age in the '60s and '70s, when rebellion was celebrated. Question everything. Question authority. Most importantly, question yourself. So indirectly, my educational struggles positioned me to become a lifelong learner - not because I passed tests, but because I forced to learned to think.

My academic disaster continued until college, where suddenly questioning was encouraged. We were asked to find meaning, think critically, challenge assumptions. I had the opportunity to take philosophy courses. These skills or what some would call disabilities have served me well, allowing me to live outside a mainstream culture that has decayed into something resembling a race toward idiocracy.

it’s no wonder I started drinking at a very early age. In my second year of high school, I was also fortunate enough to survive bout with alcoholism. Recovery is like surviving a brush with death. If you’re fortunate enough to recover, you realize that proximity to mortality forces humility. Real wisdom comes not from accumulating information, but from understanding what you don’t know. Every breath since my last drink has been accompanied by a deep sense of gratitude - gratitude that has fundamentally changed how I see everything.

In another twist of fate, I was born with auditory nerve damage but grew to 6 feet tall by age 10. This height landed me in the very back of every classroom. Due to my hearing issues, all I could make out from teachers was "WAA WAA WAA." My answers to test questions would have placed me solidly in the idiot category. Yet a when my teachers and I had a one-on-one conversation it became apparent I was a young man a young man with an insatiable thirst for knowledge.

They say the education system is designed for teachers, not students. That was my experience through grammar and high school. It wasn't until college that I was encouraged to ask questions and develop my own answers. Sure, I had to learn to read and count again, but that was small potatoes - probably why my four-year degree took five years.

Looking back, I realize my challenges created an accidental immunity to the very systems that might have dulled my curiosity. While others absorbed rote instruction, I was forced to develop my own ways of understanding. The dyslexia taught me to see patterns and connections. The hearing loss forced me to focus more intently and protected me from mindless absorption of information. The alcoholism and recovery gave me both humility and an acute awareness of what actually matters.

Most importantly, facing mortality gave me something invaluable: a beautifully short threshold for nonsense. Life is precious, and I simply don't have patience for the manufactured drama, shallow entertainment, and performative outrage that passes for discourse today. When every breath is a gift, you develop an immediate detector for what deserves your attention and what doesn't.

I was always attracted to the cynical humor of Robin Williams and other like him. But my cultivated awareness isn't cynicism - it's clarity. In a world drowning in noise, the ability to cut through to what actually

matters might be the most radical skill of all. My struggles didn't just teach me to survive; they taught me to think, to question, and to live with the kind of grateful urgency.

“Disabilities” are only a fork in the road either you either go with the flow or push against it. It's still a matter of choice. If I could go back and do it over I wouldn't change a thing.