For Those Who Climb a Higher Mountain

For anyone on the planet who lives in a town or city, if they've not heard of Eric Yuan, they've very likely heard of Zoom. Zoom is one of the leaders in video conferencing software and was founded in 2011 by the billionaire Chinese-American. Married at 22 to his sweetheart, Sherry, his inspiration for Zoom originated from the ten-hour journeys he took twice a year to see her. Yuan's love-sickness turned out to be a boon for our mental health. During the pandemic that 2020, when the world was locked down and isolated even from neighbours, it kept the economy going and the world sane. People were able to engage and increase their well-being by meeting work deadlines, or just meeting online.

Yet, when Yuan first applied for a viss to the US, he was refused not once, not twice, not three or four times, but eight times. Despite this, he believes that overcoming obstacles and rejection can make you stronger. For Yuan, his academic mind helped him to navigate the world of learning. And for most of us learning is a cognitive process we take for granted. We’re born, we learn to talk, we go to school, and we learn to read. Maybe later, we’ll attend college and university, find work, marry, or find someone and start a family. Even if we don't, our ability to move through life without physical or mental barriers makes our world relatively easy to navigate.

Yuan's love-sickness turned out to be a boon for our mental health.

Except, it’s not that easy for everyone. Early in the journey, some of us may find a great many obstacles. And if these aren't immediately apparent, society gives you no leeway. No one offers to push you, guide you, or take time to explain. Either you fit in or you fall.

The best child artist in Britain

Born in 1974 to a Barbadian father and a St. Lucian mother, the world-renowned artist Stephen Wilshire was completely uncommunicative during his early childhood. At three, he was diagnosed as autistic. That same year, he lost his father in a motorbike accident. His only means of connecting with others was through drawing.

Fortunately, Stephen's prodigious talent was hard to hide. He displayed an uncanny gift for drawing sweeping cityscapes and buildings. His school began to nurture him, and encouraged him to begin using simple words and phrases.

At eight, an ex-Prime Minister, Edward Heath, gave him his first commission to paint Salisbury Cathedral. Sir Hugh Casson, President of London's Royal Academy of Art, believed him to be the best child artist in Britain. All this before he had learned to speak fully. Today, Stephen's work has been sold and exhibited all over the world, inspiring others who dream of following in his artistic footsteps.

Every time there was a test, the results were displayed for all to see in order of score. He was placed steadfastly at the bottom.

Three individuals I encountered in life were inspirational in overcoming the obstacles put in front of them. Their accounts have been anonymised.

A World of Jumbled Letters

The Mayo Clinic describes dyslexia thus:

Dyslexia is a learning disorder that involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words (decoding). Also called reading disability, dyslexia affects areas of the brain that process language.

Vince had grown up in a place where teachers didn’t know much about dyslexia. Although people who are dyslexic are of normal or higher intelligence, in their eyes he was at best stubborn, and at worse, stupid. Beatings were common. He grew up believing he was of little value. Despite all this, being naturally gregarious found other ways to build his esteem. He became great at tennis, rising in fact to national championship level. He was also brilliant at Scrabble.

. . . in their eyes he was at best stubborn, and at worse, stupid.

Vince developed a technique which involved understanding the rules of scrabble as he did the rules of tennis and applying them. Knowing where to serve, lobby, backhand, and smash. All of us who played him were outraged he was able to beat us with such ease and blamed ourselves for helping him. The truth was it was his own brain that worked out a strategy. We decided we would not be humiliated by playing chess with him.

Learning by Memory

Ricky was seriously dyslexic. The teacher constantly told him he had no chance of succeeding at anything. Had she said, "It’s ok not to be the top", or, "Just try your best," he might have just gone along. But something in him refused to give up. Every time there was a test, the results were displayed, n order of score, for all to see. And he was placed steadfastly at the bottom.

He stopped playing football. He stopped watching his favourite shows; going out with friends after college. Instead, he buckled down for the test.

Ricky resolved that he was going to get on the score test board. He stopped playing football. He stopped watching his favourite shows; going to the park with friends after school. Instead, he buckled down to revise.

The day the test results came out, he started, naturally, by looking at the bottom. Moved up, his heart beating and racing. Halfway up he stopped. Understanding what had happened. She hadn’t graded his paper at all. Then a friend passed and said, "Wow! Congratulations!"

Richard continued moving up. There was his name third from the top. He had made it into the top three. From then on, he pushed through the doubts and whenever he saw an obstacle in his mind, he remembered that soaring from bottom to third place.

He was an intellectual, far more than me, but when he recounted that story, his face lit up like a child at Christmas getting the prize they had only dared dream of.

Working Through the Strategy

Sammy had brilliant concepts, but the general consensus was that he was lazy and playing the fool. At university he did the minimum he could with his draft assignments before handing them in. The lecturers would then scrawl their corrections all over it.

On paper, he seemed to ramble, but it was his poor spelling that really stood out. Back then there was no Grammarly, but there were spellcheckers. I’d then exasperatedly edit it for him. More than once, I asked him, “Why the hell don’t you fix your work before you send it in?”

He’d laughed. “Why should I when the lecturers do it for me anyway?”

It was a strategy in a way; although I reminded him that some of the lecturers were pretty harsh. One had overtly stated there was no room in a university for single parents, older students, or those with any kind of disability to succeed.

Another made comments which showed their supremacist colours pretty clearly. A few of us had already burnt our bridges in heated discussions with them. Such lecturers were not, I felt, the type to look kindly on Sammy’s struggles. I suggested they might think he wasn’t suitable graduate material and make overall prejudicial decisions on his grades. He didn’t seem to mind.

One day Sammy asked me to look at his original draft. I was surprised because it was incomparable to the others I’d corrected. It was James Joyce meets Alice in Wonderland after he'd drunk all the whiskey in Ireland. I’d have gotten through the Hampton Court Maze quicker.

I looked at him. He looked at me, then said very quietly indeed, “This is my original draft before I fix it for the lecturer.”

It turned out he wasn’t lazy; far from it. He was fighting a battle with every letter. By letting the class feel he’d sent in a raw draft, he subsumed some of the pain of others laughing at his finished piece. Being a pragmatist, my first awed thought was, “How did he get into University?”

But there are ways when one is determined. We went through the work together. I broke down the things he could understand and helped with those that were too stressful. I soon discovered that it was shame, not lack of ability, that was really holding him back.

When he was eventually persuaded by someone far more tactful than me to ask for help, his marks and his confidence soared. For me, it was a lesson in sensitivity. I suspect he asked me because I criticised his ‘laziness’ rather than laughed, which for him was the lesser of the two evils. I genuinely wanted him to improve.

“This is my original draft. Before I fix it for the lecturer.”

The next time I saw him, years later, I was facing him with a vulnerable client, and he was a position where he able to make decisions that could impact beneficially on not just my client's future, but that of many others. I was very pleased to see him because it showed how far he’d overcome his fears.

I was wished it was one of our old lecturers sitting with me in front of Sammy. But at the same time, I was highly relieved. If my client ever needed encouragement to move on in life, here was someone who could show them how to move mountains.