Doubt and Belief

Obviously, my favorite author of all time is Oscar Wilde. I remember the first time I saw him. There was a picture of him on the pink spine of a thick book. He looked familiar! I needed to know more about him after I saw that picture. Turned out that Oscar is Irish and I have Irish ancestors. Many of his features I could pick out in relatives of mine--the long nose, the sleepy eyes.

I read everything I could about him and by him. His paradoxes intrigued me. His idea that life imitates art and that art should be useless---well, these were new, interesting ideas to me.

Now, I've run across a new Oscar Wilde quote that I think is very interesting.

"To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die." Source

I love this quote. Oscar was always challenging the status quo of Victorian England. I would love to hear him speak of the world today. Could you imagine what Oscar Wilde might say about US politics and Hollywood? I wish I could imagine it. I wish I could see his brilliance live on in the world today.

Always Skeptical... but maybe not

Recently, I read this great post at another blog, Autism Diva. Her posts are always very interesting and thought provoking for me. A young boy identified as "D" who is 9 years old and communicates through a keyboard made a video you can see in the post. The things that D says are simply amazing and really touching. In fact, that's downplaying it a lot. They're beautiful.

But the skeptic part of me kept thinking there's no way a nine year old boy could have written these things! Then I started thinking about other youngsters who have done amazing things. Mozart wrote his first composition before the age of 5. Picasso was a gifted artist from a young age. His first word was "pencil."

If we can accept genius in other areas, such as music or art, why not with language?

This reminds me of another blogger, Possummomma, who has a blog called Atheist in a Mini Van. Recently, she shared some of her own daughter's writing. Immediately, people accused her of faking her daughter's writing because it was just so good.

Why can't we accept incredible language skills in children? Why did I have this nagging doubt about D's skills when I saw what he wrote?

I have to run, but here's an interesting link about child prodigy writers. It's short, so give it a read.