Imagine you wake up one morning and find yourself transformed into a gigantic insect. And then, as you leave your room, your family members and loved ones fall in utter shock. As your story unfolds, you analyze the change in the behavior of your loved ones. You struggle to fit yourself into your new body and try to communicate with your loved ones but fail every time, and eventually, your family sees you as a burden and places you in isolation in a locked room. Your love for the family hasn’t changed but your loved ones have changed the affection towards you. Your family rejected your sudden transformation out of the human body. You feel disowned, disrespected, and alienated because they were horrified by your human transformation. In biology, such a transformation is known as metamorphosis, which is the transformation of the body into different stages until it becomes adult, like the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly.
The above analogy was taken from Franz Kafka’s novella ‘The Metamorphosis’, a short story first published in 1915. The story revolves around Gregor Samsa, a salesperson who wakes up one morning to be transformed into an insect-like creature. In Franz Kafka’s novel, his family estranges Gregor Samsa due to his physical transformation. However, such a human body transformation is only possible in an extraordinary literary piece of fiction. It is not possible outside fiction.
But what is possible outside fiction is the transformation inside your mind. The gradual build-up of your cognitive granules and a sudden revelation of your intellectual abilities to you. We all have experienced moments of enlightenment or sudden epiphanies in our lifetime. And that moment happens when we learn something new or unveil some reality using our curiosity and critical thinking capabilities. Once we continue on that learning journey and keep building our cognitive abilities, our minds get refined in our critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. We start accumulating such intellect, eventually transforming our minds and making us stand out. Then, a moment comes when we reach our intellectual metamorphosis stage, similar to Gregor Samsa — not physically but cognitively.
Unlike in fiction, the build-up of cognitive abilities has a direct influence on your colleagues, co-workers, and the people at the workplace. Once your transformed mind becomes wiser, the people around you will start alienating you, disaffecting you, and eventually estrange you. Because you have become a person of a new mind, the old cult might throw you out of the circle of like-minded people or try to muzzle your thoughts. At that point, don’t be the silent person in the room. It’s time for you to speak up and impact the room.
If you feel you have become the smartest person in the room, be the driver of change. Do not fall into the trap of imposter syndrome or succumb to social pressure, which will pull down your self-confidence like Franz Kafka.
Franz Kafka was a literary intellect but was so down with his self-confidence that he passed his will to his entrusted friend to burn most of his writing without publishing. Franz Kafka’s friend Max didn’t fulfill his request; instead, he went against his will and published Kafka’s work posthumously. Max believed that the world must know the remarkable work of the literary genius, and he decided to outweigh his friend’s wish to burn his work.
Next time you see yourself as the smartest person in the room, don’t leave the room; ignite the place with your thoughts and views. If you know your stuff, make yourself heard until the corner office of your corporate floor. You have to speak up when you find yourself as an intellectually transformed person, like a caterpillar who has passed the stage of metamorphosis. If you have yet to reach that stage, try to be the best learner in the room and wait to leave until you are ready to ignite people’s minds with your thoughts. Don’t try to burn your thoughts like Franz Kafka’s will to his friend. Be courageous.
Your intelligence is meaningless if you don’t have courage. Courage is essential to eradicating self-doubts; it makes you confident enough to ignite thoughts in other people’s minds. Your mind is a tinderbox for enlightening other minds, so use it wisely when you know you are the smartest person in the room.
Alas, remember that intelligence without courage is not impactful. Such intelligence without courage is recyclable.
Author: Asif Durrani
Dated: 17 March 2024
https://www.linkedin.com/in/asifdurrani
Also published at Medium
Asif Durrani 