Grazing Rites

It occurred to me the other day that having a very limited form of dyslexia could actually be very healthy, mentally.

An odd premise I know but I’ll explain.

When you have dyslexia you lose confidence in your ability to perform simple tasks like copy down a phone number. You’re constantly checking and double and even triple checking things to make sure you didn’t get the order wrong.

Why could this be a good thing?

Well I think in my case, where the dyslexia is very very mild it taught me at a young age not to be overconfident. To allow for the possibility that you might be wrong. To be constantly re-evaluating your opinion of things. To someone with dyslexia it is, I would think, far more common to review and revise your thoughts of someone long after the first impression.

I know what some of you are thinking, I’ve been entrusted with some of the most sensitive election data at all levels of government. I’ve been the primary elections results data entry clerk for an entire riding and I suffer from dyslexia?! Damn straight. And we’re all better for it because while I am ever so slightly more likely to make a mistake, I’m several orders of magnitude more likely to catch not only my mistake but the mistakes of others.

I proof-read my written works more often than the ordinary person and I think they benefit from the process.

Sure, my dyslexia might be a cause for my OCD but that has more often than not been a good thing in the long run both for myself and others.

Dyslexics may not be the best choice for data entry clerks but I bet on the whole we make pretty good leaders, we’re always open to an opposing view and ready to revise our position based on new information or perspective.

Just speak slowly when you give us your phone number.

This entry was posted on February 26, 2007 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.