I’m going to tell you right now that you are a modern day Renaissance Warrior. This is because you can do many, many things very well. This includes running homes, projects and businesses, supporting organizations and community actions, raising children, teaching others, making things, and speaking truth to power too. Look around. Yes you.
You have many interests, and you give them your attention in serial – and in tandem – fashion. Both are natural and good. You make connections and grow ideas, along with beautiful gardens and families. You learn new things always that you apply toward enjoyment of life, to the tasks at hand, and for the greater good. You read, you love, you share. You help those who need it.
You travel, sometimes, and serve as an ambassador of kindness, while fortifying the bedrock of generous ways and connection across continents.
And the skills you have gained, the spirits you can summon, and the communities you have built, swirl around you in a wild wind of competency and creativity.
You, my friend, are brilliant like the best. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Being a Renaissance Warrior is very different than being a technician, a deployment, or a cog in another’s machine. You are a unique, fast and flowing font of intensity and genius. Your life shows you where you’ve done this. And just because your work may not be in museums or slung across the history books, the fruits of your labors are everywhere. And they are good.
You may, on occasion, find yourself or someone telling you “you should focus.” Or that you should “do something” with your talents. Or say you are a “jack of all trades, master of none.” These are squelching admonishments meant to make you feel small, so that you’ll sign up for cogdom in someone else’s idea-machine.
But you aren’t Jack. And while Jack may not know sh!t, you clearly do, and you know exactly when to employ what you know. And you also know when not to. That’s wisdom.
You may have one or two special talents, where you’ve spent maybe 40+ hours per week for years. This is useful, yet these are only a few things you happen to be wildly worthy in. Look around: despite your hardships, your mistakes, your failings, and your background, YOU have made good things happen all over.
Take it in.
To all of you who have been told you are “too much,” or have been diagnosed with ADHD, or hinted you may have some kind of neurodivergency2, or a mental health ‘ailment,’ please remember this:
Da Vinci was a polymath. He did many things. Most engaged, intelligent people do too: we are all gloriously complicated. He was likely “too much” to someone. Thank goodness.
And if you find yourself struggling to describe your endeavors in some elevator-speech kind of way, your soul may balk. This is because your kind of genius can not limit itself with labels. Because wide alive geniuses do things, explore territories, connect ideas across disciplines, engage with people, and participate in lots of ways in many spaces.
And genius lives long enough to help make happiness come closer to us all another day. Stay the course.
Hang in there. I felt someone needed this today.
FOOTNOTES
I want to thank my mom here, who as a child used to say with every new skill I’d gain traction in, “you are a Renaissance woman!” My mom was a true champion of women especially. She knew we carry so many valuable skills, often done with subtle aplomb, and with little acknowledgement. My mom notices worldly works like art and writing, building, and also paid accomplishments, and she recognizes the domestic arts too. If someone can make a good meal AND counsel another human off a cliff, or write something of note: well, they are a Renaissance Warrior. If you didn’t have this as a child, well, I want to share this with you now. It’s never too late to look around at your gifts and know you are amazing. I see you.
- I love an ironic autocorrect.
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