Vincent Van Gogh and Doctor Who.

It feels odd to say it, but I was moved, two days ago, by an episode of Doctor Who, the saga of an immortal time traveller. Before you think me too eccentric in my feelings, I shall explain.

The episode in question concerned Vincent Van Gogh. Doctor Who travelled to visit him, at the beginning of his final year of life, upon seeing his art in the Musee D’Orsay. I will not spoil the episode for you, should you be interested in following the adventures of Dr. Who, but I do need to address one point.

Vincent Van Gogh was adjudged by all, himself included, a failure in his lifetime. His art was rejected. He only ever sold one work and that was to someone close to him. In the end, he so despaired of his life, of his social rejection, of his failure, that he took his own life at the age of 37. He died thinking that his entire life had been a failure. He died never knowing what impact he was to make upon art subsequent to his death.

None of us know what posthumous mark we will make. None of us know whether posterity will even give us one thought, or whether all that we did and were, will be lost when the last person who remembers us, dies. This is the common fate of Man. We cannot see what our lives provoke, in the time beyond our final day. We live and die, not knowing whether or not we will be forgotten.

The situation with regards to Van Gogh is particularly acute. His sense of failure was so strong, his conviction that his life amounted to nothing was so intense, that he actually killed himself. Yet, Vincent Van Gogh is accounted one of the greatest painters who ever lived. The tragedy is that he never knew it. The one person to whom this success would have mattered most, never got the chance to witness it.

In Doctor Who, Vincent Van Gogh is transported into the future, to the modern era. He is taken into the Musee D’Orsay to an exhibition of his own work. He is stunned to see that anyone would ever care enough about his works – which he was unable to sell in his lifetime – to exhibit them in a national museum. He is profoundly moved by this, to learn that his life was not a failure after all. Yet, that is not what moved him most. He overhears a museum art guide describe him as the greatest painter who ever lived. Tears well in his eyes. The failure in life, is to be a success in death.

I was deeply touched by this, for there is great tragedy in Vincent Van Gogh’s life. More tragic than his life, was that his early death deprived him of the knowledge of his own eventual acceptance and success. The greatest gift Van Gogh could ever have received, was knowledge of his own future reputation. Van Gogh, in Doctor Who, witnessed what none of us do: what the world thinks of us and says of us, when we are gone. He saw his impact on future time, long after his own death. What made it all the more poignant is that his success in death, should be in such contrast to his utter failure in life.

None of us know what final impact our lives will have, if any, on the world. Even people who are famous in their own lifetimes, may be unremembered just fifty or a hundred years after their deaths. Many a “famous” writer of the early twentieth century is now utterly forgotten. So, too, many of the early film stars. Their names would go unrecognized today, except by film historians. So, too, is it so, for those not known in their lifetimes, who may become famous in death. I find these cases peculiar, for everyone seems to know of them, except themselves: they never lived to see their own reputations blossom.

No matter what we think we know of our lives, we cannot know what will be thought of us after we are gone. Nothing is a guarantee that our memories shall endure – not even fame in one’s own lifetime. We cannot know whether, by having lived, we have changed the world in any enduring fashion. All we can do, in our lives, is to express our uniqueness, as best as we can and hope that the world and the future find value in it, even if we shall never know it. There is one mercy in all of this, however: that is, even if the future forgets us, we shall not be around to know about it. Yet, the opposite applied in Van Gogh’s case – the future remembers him – and he never knew.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The true value of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is marketed as a social network for professionals. It is also one of the ways people use to look up old friends, perhaps from University, school, or previous jobs.

Most people think of the value of LinkedIn, to be in the networks it allows you to form. However, I personally don’t think this is its most valuable attribute. That value lies in something more subtle than a network. LinkedIn’s true value is not in who joins your network, but in who doesn’t.

I have recently become active on LinkedIn, although I have supposedly been a member for a couple of years. I say “supposedly” because in all that time I never logged in and never did anything on LinkedIn, at all. Now, my recent activity has involved a lot of checking for the presence of old friends on the database and sending them an invitation. The responses have been instructive. There have been two types of response: the quick acceptance, either without notice, or with an accompanying note – and the complete failure to respond. In my case, of 19 invitations sent, 14 have resulted in acceptance and 5 have responded only with silence. I find these ones the most interesting. Of these two of them are people I have worked with and the rest are people I had considered old friends. That these people, whom I had lost contact with, but still considered warmly, should ignore my request to join me on LinkedIn, is very instructive indeed. It says that, perhaps, my memories of them are undeserved, that the lingering warmth I feel for their inner image, within me, is inappropriate. It prompts me to re-evaluate my personal history.

Further examination of those who ignore my request is even more instructive. One of them was once considered my “best friend”. Yet, he has ignored my request now, for over a week and a half. Why has he not accepted? There is, perhaps, a clue in the number of his connections. He has HUNDREDS. He may actually begrudge me the advantage that would accrue upon accessing his network, given that mine is new and much smaller. There might be some selfishness at work here. Either that, or there are things I just don’t know about my former best friend, at all.

Then again, there is another LinkedIn member who has ignored my request. In this case I cannot be entirely certain that I have the right person, but it is extremely likely that I do, since he is in the same industry and has the same rare name. He is a writer, or as he puts it: “Independent Publishing Professional”. He is actually a best selling literary writer, whom I first met about 17 years ago, unbelievable as that is to write, now. Those 17 years seem awfully brief. I met him regularly, over the space of about six years in the 1990s, then a couple of times in the last decade (since I had left the country). However, it should be noted that I met him many times, and we had many conversations. I considered him a good friend. He, too, has ignored my request. In his case, I do wonder if he is, again, guarding his contacts, most of which are in publishing/writing. He knows that I am a writer. Perhaps he feels competitive.

LinkedIn is a test of the solidity of one’s relationships and friendships. If an overture to an old friend is ignored, then it allows one to reconsider whether that “old friend” was much of a friend at all – or whether they are too shallow to remember one, over the intervening years.

In a way, therefore, though disappointed, I am as grateful to those who refuse my LinkedIn request, as to those who accept. Those who refuse to join me on LinkedIn are letting me know the true nature of their feelings and thoughts towards me. They are letting me understand how little, perhaps, I really knew them at all.

So, here is a big thank you to all those who have joined me on LinkedIn – and just as big a thank you to all those who have refused to do so. You have spared me much time, in my future life, from considering you. Thanks.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

On leaving a mark.

Some of you may have wondered why I write so much, so consistently, across the years. It is not, after all, what most people do. The reason is simple but pervasive. I wish all that I have been, have felt, have thought and have seen could endure, forever. To my mind, it is not just death all Men should be afraid of, but forgetfulness – the loss of all that we knew, through the unadorned passage of Time.

I write so that one day, my children will see their own childhoods as I saw them, and my wife saw them. I write so that one day, I, too, will be able to look back on times past, with greater knowledge than mere remembrance, in old age, might afford. I write, too, so that long after I am gone, my words might remain to give some inkling of who I had been, and what my personal world had been like. Perhaps those words will find readers, perhaps not. However, it is likely, at least, that my own descendants will read my words and come to know their ancestor better, thereby. I am sorry, however, that such illumination shall be a one way casting of the light and that I shall not know who reads my words, or comes to understand, in some small way, who it was who wrote them and what was written of. Then again, that is how it is now. I do not, in general, know who reads my words. I do not, in fact, know most people’s reactions to these words, since few comment. I know this, however: that there are readers out there, in the unknown world of the Internet. Some of those readers have made it clear that they value my words, and find meaning in them. So, that is another reason to write: to create meaning in the minds and hearts of others, to communicate my understandings and the essence of my world, so that it might be remembered by and carried in other minds.

I realize, more than any other, perhaps, that even my greatest efforts towards making a written record is only the merest hint of what I have known, felt, thought and understood. I have not the time to record all my life as it is lived and experienced: I have only the time to select a moment here, or there, a thought now and again, and make of it, what I hope will be an enduring expression of it. Almost all of my life and the lives of my children and wife, will be lost, at the outset, for never having been recorded in any way, except in our minds.

I understand, too, that those to whom my words will mean most, are yet too young to grasp their import to them. My children will grow into an appreciation of what I am doing, or have done, depending on their temporal perspective. They will have a written record and reflection upon their earliest lives. To me, that seems a very valuable thing to have and something which is, I believe, very rare to have, since few parents spare the significant time and energy to make such a record. Few, in fact, would pause to consider its value, until it was too late to make it happen.

I don’t know, however, whether anyone outside of my descendants, will see value in my words, in the distant future, long after I am gone. However, whether it is widely valued, by others, or not, does not change the intrinsic value of making this record. It needs only one appreciative future reader to make it worth having been written. For then, my understanding would have been projected beyond my time, into the mind of another. I would, as it were, have left a mark.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)