Believe in Your Genius

Genius is believed to arrive at birth. But contrary to popular belief, all of us have genius.

Or a better way to put it: all of us are bestowed genius at the time of our birth and it doesn’t really leave us until death. And even then, the gifts of our genius will keep giving in the cycle of eternity if properly nourished.

The modern definition of the word has come to mean a specific person with supreme intellectual ability or creative prowess—someone who achieves new discoveries or advances in a domain of knowledge.”1

But the word genius originates from Roman mythology, which means:

the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place, or thing. Much like a guardian angel, the genius would follow each man from the hour of his birth until the day he died.”2

If genius then is present in everyone and not a select few, how do we unleash this genius?

The difference is whether we choose to cultivate that genius throughout our lifetime. But for us to even do that, we must first accept it, and for us to accept it, we must believe each of us have genius, and acknowledge it when we see it and feel it.

Genius thought of as something reserved for the few has become a reason why individual genius isn’t more cultivated in the way it deserves to be. That we can’t or won’t be Einsteins or Da Vincis or Marie Curies or Musks is said often and used as an excuse, but this only exemplifies the point: each of these people cultivated their genius to the utmost extreme and because they cultivated their own genius, by definition, there can only be one of them. More importantly, trying to be like them would only be running away from cultivating our own genius. We can be inspired by other people and their respective geniuses, but we cannot copy or achieve someone else’s genius—we can only cultivate their own.

Think of it like each of us have our own spiritual pet that we didn’t choose but chose us. This representation is prevalent in mythology, literature, and even in modern fiction: Dorothy’s terrier Toto, Luke Skywalker’s droid R2D2, Ash’s pokemon Pikachu, Jon Snow’s direworlf Ghost. These are not merely expendable sidekicks. They protect their owners and have deep similarities with them—they almost share one soul. Genius is similar: we cannot have someone else’s genius because each of us have our own, a spirit which we are one with, one whose lives depend on us, and reciprocally, our lives depend on them.

Genius is a gift we must accept. We must believe in its existence. And we must cultivate it—feed it—like we would spiritual companions and pets. Only by doing so will our own individual geniuses serve us in return. This process will take time because our geniuses need nourishment in order to grow to its full potential. But it will never get close unless we believe in our individual genius in the first place.

While it may take time for it to reveal its shape, its features, its ultimate final form, believing in it is the first step. And once we understand that it is an integral part of us, we must accept it for what it is, and nourish it as much as we can. We can’t let it die, because then, we may be physically alive, but would be spiritually dead.

And while many of us might feel spiritually dead in our day to day—an endemic of modern times, it is never too late. After all, our own individual geniuses are inside us just waiting to be nourished, and ultimately, be freed. It all starts by believing in our genius.


  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius↩︎

  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_(mythology)↩︎


September 27, 2021

Creativity


Previous post

We Are Time Itself Some argue the past is an illusion And the future is already fixed Some say the present is a singularity Where we are watching our lives in a

Next post

Creativity is an Act of Rebellion Creation is in the very fabric of our species. We are builders by nature. It is our ability to imagine—to see a probable future in our heads and