It's no secret that every person is a genius at something — they just, maybe, haven't developed it in themselves; say, a genius at spitting for height. Well, that sounds unfounded: why, one asks, is every person a genius? Is that a wishful claim pulled out of thin air? Like, everyone wants to think of themselves as unique — but why? Success is imposed on us; it seems everyone around is successful, and you're not? Everyone around is doing something unique, and you're not? But it seems to me that people's conformity is exactly in their desire to be unique. Anyway, that's not what I'm talking about.
What is genius? How can you tell it by outward signs? We'll leave the "but why?" question aside. We just need to — that's all.
Appearance is definitely not decisive. Take Nabokov — perfectly ordinary looks — or Dostoevsky: clearly no Paganini on the outside, and yet. Besides, the modern principle of seeming rather than being works very efficiently here: everyone has the same image of a genius — a man with long hair, careless, thin, tall. So we grow the hair — and voilà: you're a genius in everyone's eyes, which is basically what you need, and then we monetize or extract the benefit some other way.
Illness — misses again. Though there's a common opinion that a genius is forever being treated for mental disorders, antidepressants, all that junk. Well, I'll tell you: mental illness is not cool, it drains a lot of life force and more often just exists as is, with no genius whatsoever in the carrier.
Addictions — another cliché. The poor genius just can't accept the cruel world. And to whom is it not cruel, that world? And which of us isn't a genius? Ha-ha, right. Anyway, there are so many addicts around — and apart from them thinking they're geniuses, they have no other correlation with genius whatsoever.
There are probably some other "signs" of a genius, but something tells me they don't work — just like the ones I wrote above. So what does work, then? I think if you ask a real genius whether he would want to be a genius — to be one, not to think of himself as one — he would say he wouldn't want it for anything, but the cards fell that way: he has the role of a genius. That, probably, is already close.
Genius is not a plus on top of what you already have, like genius = ordinary person + genius. That's exactly where those who don't carry it inside go wrong: they only see the picture, and even then only when someone points at it. Genius is neutral: it gives something and takes something away. And what it takes away is not what is visible from outside — it takes away what nobody sees, what only the genius himself sees.
So why doesn't he want to be a genius? Well, he tends to downplay its pluses — that's because he, like ordinary people, is subject to public opinion, which doesn't see that in him. As a result his self-esteem swings: one moment he shouts that he's a genius, the next he considers himself ordinary. But overall there's always more negative, and so either he doesn't want this role, or he tries somehow to withdraw from society, to cut down social contacts.
And is there such a thing as a recognized genius or an unrecognized one? Well, obviously the unrecognized one is cooler — like, he's so good that others couldn't even understand it. As if they managed to understand the genius of the recognized one. I think recognition is the result of how profitable recognition is, that's all. And there's no such thing as a recognized genius — well, at best after death, again — a matter of profit.
And what's the conclusion, then? As if there has to be one. Fine, let there be one. The conclusion is: you should do what you love, that's all, and all these disputes about genius — aside.