Aspasia was the teacher of Socrates, one of the greatest philosophers in history.
In a similar way, although with the big difference that I am not Socrates, my mother, who barely knew how to write, taught me to read when I was 3 years old.
In the many tests they gave me, they asked me how and why I learned to read at that age. And I answered that I saw children going to school and I wanted to go too, I saw my father reading and wanted to read too. Then I had my appendix removed and to keep me entertained my mother decided to indulge me and teach me my first letters.
A month later I was already reading everything I could find: posters, books, magazines, advertisements.
My father loved to read and bought books, entire encyclopedias. When I was 8 he bought a collection of 60 books and then 40 more books at a used book fair. So, between the ages of 8 and 10, I read those 100 books.
From Borges and Unamuno to Kafka and Poe. I read Papillon, Robinson Crusoe, Trafalgar, Cortázar, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.
Many of them weren't to my father's liking, but I liked them. One day he threw away a book with Chinese characters, and I rescued it and read it; it was the Dao De Jing.
Then came books on science, physics, biology, and astronomy.
I studied engineering, medicine, philosophy, and programming.
But it wasn't until I was 47 that I learned I was bipolar and gifted, and not until I was 59 that I learned I was autistic.
But if for a moment you might believe that this brought me success and happiness, I'm telling you it didn't. Rather, I had a worldview that made me a misanthrope, a nihilist, a loner, and a pessimist.
#actuallyautistic #gifted #bipolardisorder #neurodivergent #hyperlexia #highiq #misanthropy #nihilism