Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Dad, Education, Eye, Health
As some of you know, I have had a serious eye problem since the beginning of the year.
What makes it worse is that it has affected the eye that was once my ‘good eye’.
Over the past 6 months, I’ve had all manner of drugs, tests and specialist visits and unfortunately, it keeps finding new things wrong with it rather than fixing the things we knew were wrong.
It’s pretty shit to be honest, but one thing happened a few weeks ago that made me laugh.
So I’m at the surgeons and they discovered the pressure in my eye was at an extreme high.
In a matter of weeks, it had risen 300% without any clear indication why. They immediately took action, administering all manner of new drugs to try and bring it under control as the ramifications of leaving it could be permanent blindess.
In typical ‘Campbell luck’ fashion, when they first re-checked the results – post first medication – the pressure had actually risen. That really freaked them out and were getting ready to send me to the hospital for an operation to relieve the pressure. But after another check 20 mins later, they saw it was starting to take affect.
Slowly, but as my surgeon said, “any decline is a good decline”.
Eventually things calmed down enough for them to feel good to send me home for a few days before getting me in to check the results again. To increase the odds of things going in the right direction, they gave me some additional meds and said:
“They will make you very sleepy and increase the odds of you needing the lavatory”.
I burst out laughing and said, “that’s an unfortunate combination” to which they looked at me confused.
After what felt like minutes, they laughed before telling me they’d never thought of that before.
Now I am not knocking them – they’re amazing and doing all they can to save my sight – but it did remind me of 2 things I’ve learned over the years.
The first is that very smart people are often a bit stupid outside of their field of excellence.
The second is a quote by the actor, Peter Ustinov who said:
“The people who reach the top of the tree are those who haven’t got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom”.
So much in life seems to be focused on only valuing the ‘academically smart’.
I get it, we need them. They’re brilliant and can do things that few could ever do – regardless of the amount of training.
Doctors.
Scientists.
Engineers.
You definitely don’t want any Tom, Dick or Harry taking on work like that.
But by the same token, there are people who have another set of skills that are just as worthy of respect.
An ability to do things that a doctor, scientist or engineer could never do – and yet has real value and benefit to the rest of us.
I don’t mean ‘everyday generalists’, I mean people with a level of skill and/or craft that represents real ability.
In life we need both groups of people … the academically smart and [for want of a better term] the life smart.
Both offer value and skills to who we are and how we live.
Both do things that the others couldn’t do and probably couldn’t imagine doing.
At a time where more and more companies will only hire those with ‘a degree’, it’s worth remembering that while education is hugely important and valuable we should – like the ad industry – make sure we’re not forgetting to evaluate and value those by what they have done, not simply what they know, because as my old man used to say:
“Talk is easy, action is hard”.