When we think of a “genius”, we generally think of someone who is very smart, and that’s often true. However, there have been many geniuses throughout history that weren’t smart in the conventional sense, but more than made up for it in other ways. A great example of that was Thomas Edison, one of the greatest inventors of all time who was famously bad at math.
Another solid example is Leonardo da Vinci. While he is best known as an artist, he also had incredible knowledge about subjects such as anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography and many other areas. Much of that fed into his work as an artist, but he was an overall brilliant man.
That said, he wasn’t a “genius” in the traditional sense at all. From Walter Isaacson’s book about him:
Leonardo had almost no schooling and could barely read Latin or do long division. His genius was of the type we can understand, even take lessons from. It was based on skills we can aspire to improve in ourselves, such as curiosity and intense observation. He had an imagination so excitable that it flirted with the edges of fantasy, which is also something we can try to preserve in ourselves and indulge in our children.
In the cases of da Vinci and Edison, their lack of native genius was made up for by curiosity. For example, da Vinci’s curiosity about anatomy led to amazing details in his sculptures, such as this tiny muscle in the forearm that contracts only when lifting the pinky finger, seen here in his “Moses” sculpture.
I’m certainly not advocating for you to give up on math or other skills, but curiosity can sure take you a long way if you dig deep into it.
