On delayed gratification and human worth.

There is a tendency to hail those who come to prominence quickly. By this I mean not child prodigies, who obviously are noticed early, for their unusual precocity - but adults who "succeed" quickly. So, the young chief executive, the TV presenter in her early twenties, the "novelist" just out of school, the teenaged film star...these types of people are all thought praiseworthy and somehow more eminent for their rapid rise. Yet, something has been overlooked in this perception: the difficulty of the task.



You see, some people do not rise to early prominence, not because they do not have the ability, but because they set themselves much more difficult tasks than those of the ones who come quickly to our attention and praise. It is much more difficult to write a great 750,000 word opus than it is to write a 70,000 word "novel". Yet the latter accomplishment might take a few weeks or months, be published in a year or two and make a "star" out of a twenty year old writer. Yet, the question must be asked - who truly is more worthy of our esteem: the writer who chooses to work on a book, quietly, for twenty years - or the one who churns out light, quick, easy reads to popular acclaim? I know that only one of them is likely to be remembered by posterity - and for a very good reason - for only one of them will have done something truly difficult. Yet, during their lifetime, the one of lighter, fainter achievement may, actually, be the more "famous".

I observe this because of the way I have seen people of great merit treated and greeted by others, online. Sometimes, I have noted mocking criticism of those whose achievements I know to be great, but not yet widely known. They have been directly and unflatteringly compared to others of much lesser achievement, who happen to be widely known for it. I think what is happening here is that people are making a judgement based on what they know, without realizing that there may be much that they don't know. They are also attaching merit to quick superficial achievement because it is "in their face", rather than slower, deeper, more profound achievement which may, in fact, take decades to mature and perhaps a lifetime or more to be appreciated.

It is a simple fact that no modern TV presenter, for instance, is going to be remembered in 100 years time - not one of them. Yet, there are poets, writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, composers and thinkers at work in the world who may live their lives utterly unknown, yet who will be remembered in millenia for what they do, in fact, achieve, unknown to their contemporaries and unappreciated by them. Instant fame, does not mean lasting renown. Yet, instant fame is what people most appreciate. I find it strange that people make judgements on each other, based on the assumption that what they know is all there is to know. They think that by comparing person A, who is famous for a certain set of achievements, to person B who is not famous for their unknown achievements, that they can conclude that person A is superior to person B and that person B is a "failure". This kind of thinking makes me laugh, for it shows the mental shortcomings of the one who "thinks" - and nothing more. You see person B may, in fact, have achieved something of much greater worth than person A - but their work might not yet have been published. The reason that person B has been quiet for ten or twenty years, may in fact be because they have been at work on something that takes ten or twenty years to accomplish. Just because they are silent, it doesn't mean that they are not productive. Person A, however, may be someone whose "achievements" are shallow and quickly put together, each taking but the effort of weeks or months - and so they may seem more industrious, productive and creative - yet the actual comparative merit of the works in question could put person B way ahead, when the final judgement of posterity is made.

Now, this all comes down to my title: delayed gratification. Some people - in fact, most - are unable to delay gratification sufficiently to achieve anything of real merit. They need a quick fix, an immediate return and fast results. They need to see that they have "achieved" something overnight. These people - and they are far more common than the other breed - always aim at shallow targets that are easily achieved, for these are the only things that are achieved quickly, without much struggle. Journalists, for instance, can be like this. I knew one who was: he needed an instant response to his writing and so never did what he always promised himself he would: write a real book. The problem with book writing from his point of view was that the response to it could take years in coming. He wasn't constituted to delay gratification to that extent. He would write fast and see his work in print the following day. The praise would then follow for his eloquent phrasing and he would be happy. Yet, this instant mindset prevented him from ever achieving any work of depth or lasting meaning. He is dead now, so his chance of ever doing so has passed. During his lifetime, he was very famous, yet I rather feel that his fame will not endure for the products of his mind were too quickly crafted, too "of the day", to have any permanent interest. Had he, however, been of a mind to wait, to endure the silence between creation and publication, a silence that can stretch for decades, then he might have achieved lasting renown. Certainly, whether he achieved lasting fame or not, his work would have been more worthy if it had been crafted over years, rather than minutes.

So, this explains my division of people into those who succeed quickly, but whose achievement is often shallow and those who take time to come to note, but whose achievements tend to be more profound and of lasting interest. The difference between them, is that the former cannot delay gratification and aim for shallow achievements, easily achieved; the latter are able to delay gratification, sometimes even beyond the scope of their lives (so that they never personally feel the gratification that is rightfully theirs), but who, ultimately, achieve far greater success and enduring fame. The former are like flashbulbs; the latter are like stars that take millions of years of slow accretion, before they finally ignite in atomic flame. Like stars, the latter burn for ages - and the former are forgotten even as their afterimage fades from our eyes.

The next time you find yourself being critical of someone's achievements ask yourself this: do you actually know much about the person? Are they, perhaps, at work on creations unknown to you? Are they stars, one day to ignite, who will far outshine the flashbulbs to which you compare them?

The tinsel of life, as it were, those who are shallow and bright and famous today, will all, largely be forgotten. Even the greatest of film stars will largely fade from memory, in a handful of decades. The ones who will be remembered may now have much lower profiles, but whose names will grow over time, as their contributions are appreciated. We speak now not of the actors of Ancient Greece, but of their thinkers. We know not their "stars", but their creators. So, too, will it be for our times. The people who will be remembered in ages to come are those we do not, perhaps, fully appreciate in their lifetimes. The deeper the work, the longer it takes to create and the longer still it takes to be appreciated. Yet, eventually, those who have created the deeper works, are the ones who make the greatest contributions, and who are thought of, in ages to come. All the others are forgotten, no matter how "famous" they are in their own lifetimes. An example would be Dan Brown. No-one on Earth will know who he is in 150 years time: not one person. Of that I am sure. Yet, there may be a poet, whose works are not yet published, who has been read by just himself, his mum and his girlfriend, who will be on everyone's lips in a 1,000 years. The difference is that one is a flashbulb, the other is a star. One achieved easy prominence, through shallow achievement - the other a lifetime's quiet, accretive work, building a body of work that changes language, thought and literature. Only one of these is worthy of long-term remembrance - even if that very same one is ignored in its own time.

If you wish, therefore, to have a sense of the "worth" of a person, a good clue would be in their ability to sustain delayed gratification. I rather think that the greater the capacity for this delay, the greater the actual achievements are likely to be, of that person. The ones who thrust themselves early to our attentions, as young adults, are likely to be UNABLE to delay gratification - thus these people are ultimately likely to be shallow in their achievements. The ones we should look out for, however, are those who work steadily away, for years and decades at a time, without a word of encouragement from anyone. It is these people who will surprise us by their work and ultimately be respectfully remembered for millenia to come.

Which would you rather be: a flashbulb or a star? If you have said "star" - do you think you have the patience to wait decades to achieve it? Do you know anyone who has that endurance? What are they like? Are they creating something of interest? Any comments or thoughts on the topic would be interesting to read. Thanks.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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Delayed gratification and achievement

We live in an impatient world. A world in which everyone wants everything done yesterday. Yet, is such a world a world in which greatness can thrive?

I would suggest not. Greatness comes from great effort over a long time. No significant project of human creativity happens without determined effort. Novels don't write themselves. Scientific revolutions don't just happen. Works of art don't just appear on the canvas. In all forms of creation there is the inescapable fact that someone must have put a lot of time into their art or science. This is the time it takes to learn the art, or science; the time it takes to find a worthy project; the time it takes to come to a solution to the problem or artistic expression - and the time it takes to make it happen, to make the art real, the science solid. None of this happens without a hidden factor: patience. This is the ability to simply endure while all this painstaking work takes place. There is too little of this ability in the modern world. Everyone expects everything to be immediate - and yet, without this ability to patiently endure while the slow process of creation unfolds, nothing worthwhile can ever be created. Only the trivial can happen in an instant.

So, does the modern love of instant results make for a shallow modern world? I believe so. Very few people of today have the quality of lifelong endurance that characterized most of the great geniuses of the past. People today want a life of instant luxury founded on the least effort possible: they want, in brief, instant gratification. Yet, it is a truism, that if the pleasure is immediate, the reward is slight. The greatest rewards come to those able to wait.

Yet, all is not lost. Some children show this nascent quality of delayed gratification - and its consequent possibility of great achievement - in their earliest years. One example is my son, Fintan. I can't help but note his ability to buy some chocolates - and simply hold them, without eating them, for several hours, until his older brother Ainan has returned home, so that he might share them with him. That shows the quality of delayed gratification most clearly - but also the quality of selflessness - for Ainan would never know if Fintan had simply eaten the sweets without a thought for him.

I look therefore at Fintan and note two things about him. He likes to draw - and has a gift for it. He also shows the ability to delay gratification. Putting these two attributes together one could conclude that he has the basic dispositions of an artist.

We will see what he eventually turns out to be and to do - but, at only three years old, it is quite straightforward to see foundational psychological attributes at work, in him, that could give rise to an interesting life to come.

(If you would like to read more of Fintan, three, or his gifted brothers, Ainan Celeste Cawley, seven years and six months, or Tiarnan, sixteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children. Thanks.)