My 30 Minutes as LeBron James

I was always a naturally gifted athlete, but very slow to learn physical moves. The two are absolutely not contradictory.

This is why I'm extremely respectful toward slow thinkers, though I myself think swiftly. As I once posted to Quora (my most popular answer there!), in answer to someone asking how to recognize a person's intelligence:

You need to look past appearances. I know very smart people who are uneducated, inarticulate, barely literate, and who need to be explained complicated ideas over and over before they understand - who are what you'd call slow-thinking. They'll ponder stuff practically forever - long after the educated, snappy people in the room have given their opinions....perhaps days or weeks after. And then they'll cough up a conclusion that's so clever, so surprising, so creative that your head wants to explode. Fast thinkers aren't necessarily smarter, nor are slow thinkers necessarily dumber.

The most impressive intellects are not always fast or flashy. Not, in other words, impressive-seeming. In fact, most truly intelligent people I've met haven't been very impressive-seeming, because if you've got the goods, you tend not to waste effort on the "seeming" end of it. Watch out for seemers!

I contrasted my syrupy physical learning curve with my snappy cognitive one in a Slog posting titled "The Infinite Potential of Slow Learners":

I've driven several yoga teachers to near breakdowns with my thick-headed sluggishness. "Do this," they'd instruct the class, and I'd stare in dumbfounded confusion while the others simply did the move. They'd talk slooooowly to me and raise their volume, assuming me to be an idiot. But my mind isn't the problem. It just takes a while for my body to absorb new instructions.

At this point, I've practiced yoga for 35 years, and can do some really hard poses. I'd "impress" those same teachers if they saw me! And because it took decades, rather than months, to, say, plant my palms on the floor in a forward bend, I've learned an awful lot. Every millimeter of progress produced a tiny jewel of insight. If you watch me bend forward, you'll feel like something's happening. That's not true of naturally bendy people. They just bend!

I've tried over the years to take Salsa dance classes, because I love the music so much. But dance teachers are the sort of people who learn dance moves quickly, so it's impossible for them to relate to a below-average student who needs to practice each step dozens of times. Once a step sinks in, I can perform it with good feel (maybe more so than "naturals" can!). But it's tough to find a teacher with sufficient patience.

These are areas where I learn slowly, and that's just how it is. They will not get faster. But the important thing is that my potential in these realms is as high as anyone's. In fact, maybe a tad higher, because in taking my time and pondering minutiae, I go deeper.

With that all in mind, here's a story. I was always very fast, very strong, and very energetic. But because no gym teacher ever offered me extra time to sharpen skills - and I also had a preternatural loathing of dodgeball, "the sport of douchebags" - I developed a reputation as a klutz (also, I was precociously working on spiritual practices that set me on the wrong path for skills such as shooting a basketball). But one day things clicked.

I was playing two-on-two half court basketball with some of the better players in 6th grade - surely because no one better was available for my slot. And I could not miss a shot, or fumble the ball. The player guarding me seemed absolutely vestigial; I just couldn't conceive of him as any obstacle between me and the basket. He was like a cloud drifting overhead on a sunny day. And the ball unerringly did what I wanted it to do, and went where I wanted it to go, so I scored point after point after point, like butter. I saw no other players on the court. It was as if LeBron James were puppeteering me (if he'd been born yet).

The other three were dumbfounded, but didn't say a word that day, or at any time after.

The universe has done a meticulous job of force-starving my potentially expansive ego. Another example: I once phoned a friend, out of a sudden sense of unease, to make sure she was okay, and her roommate answered with a flat "sure, she's fine" though she knew that, a few moments earlier, my friend had been mugged at knifepoint in the building's lobby.

I only heard about this later, when my friend told me her roommate had had an incomprehensible but powerful urge to keep it from me. This happens a lot. I've lived most of my life with no idea of what I'm actually good at, because no one ever tells me (people who think I suck are, however, generally quite outspoken).

While I was exhilarated, I couldn't consider it remarkable because it felt so natural. That had been the entire texture of the experience: naturalness. It's hard to remark upon what's supremely natural. You'll never think to yourself that you've just taken a particularly super-terrific breath.

So I simply let it go (as I've done with even grander breakthroughs), and returned to fulfilling klutzy expectations, though the memory has remained in the back of my mind. I'd like to say that memory has changed me, somehow, but I'm not certain it's any more meaningful than, say, my memories of dream-flying.