Success is based on having the quality of metacognition, sometimes referred to as The Third Eye, that ability to stand back in a moment of passion or inflamed emotions, analyze ourselves in an objective, detached manner, and follow up by behaving in a mature, rational way, thus circumventing our Lower Animal while elevating our Higher Self.
Some of us have more Third Eye than others. And it tends to grow with age and maturity. Remarkably, I exhibited a heavy dose of Third Eye back in 1972 when I was eleven years old. The bus had just dropped us off from school at the bottom of Greenridge Road where many of us lined up at Seven Eleven to stuff ourselves with cold cut sandwiches and candy bars. While standing in line to pay for my snack, two high school girls eyed me favorably and then one said to the other that I was cute.
As I longed to be old enough to date the teenage beauty, I heard Kevin Klug say to his friend, pointing at the high school girl who had just complimented me, “That girl just said I was cute.”
My first impulse was to shout, “Hey, you colossal moron. She wasn’t talking about you. She was talking about me.”
But then my Third Eye kicked in and said, “Cool it, man. Just look at the dude. Adenoidal pencil-neck geek. Bulging eyes. His life is horrible. Kids pick on him. His mom bags him the most plain lunches that are as nondescript as his life. He is the epitome of banality and anonymity. He harbors the worst luck. In middle school when we all had zits, the photographer for the yearbook airbrushed everyone's pimples but forgot to erase Klug's. He has absolutely nothing to live for. Give him this tiny morsel of fantasy that a beautiful high school girl bestowed him with high flattery.”
So obeying my Third Eye, I kept my mouth shut and allowed Kevin Klug to harbor the delusion that he was cute and that he had cachet with the opposite sex.
The effects of my benevolence were beyond measure, not the least of which he experienced a jolt in his confidence that helped him navigate through junior high, high school and college. Eventually, he married and had children, all successes buoyed by his sense of appeal that had been established in the Seven Eleven on that spring day in 1972.
And I, exercising my generous spirit, had allowed it to happen.
Today Kevin Klug (name changed) and I are Facebook friends. Sometimes I look at his family photos and smile to myself, knowing that all of Kevin Klug’s happiness and success can be traced to me and my Third Eye.
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