The Goldilocks Curse
Why the World Was Not Built for Genius
"Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy."
F. Scott Fitzgerald, best known for writing The Great Gatsby
If we categorize cognitive proficiency into three layers: below average, average and genius, I find the life of the average to be optimally satisfying while the remaining two struggle a lot irrespective of their worldly achievements.
Sometimes, I suspect that the world is cunningly designed for the average mind and anything less or more, like in the Goldilocks case, is punished with unseen issues of life.
Yesterday, I compiled a list of 14 historical giants, across diverse fields, and found that all of them faced serious issues around the time of their exits.
💔 Painful Exit of the Giants 🥀
Mark Twain
Oscar Wilde
Leo Tolstoy
Friedrich Nietzsche
Albert Einstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Nikola Tesla
Alan Turing
Kurt Gödel
Karl Marx
Sigmund Freud
Edmund Husserl
Marilyn Monroe
Michael Jackson
I am not saying geniuses are not needed and there is no place for the below average minds; what I am directly implying is this: Life doesn't treat you well just because you have a powerful brain, a magnetic personality, a well-connected social life, and you have contributed a lot to the world; life is indifferent to selfless love and it plays with you the way a soccer player enjoys a football.
I have observed that when our lives are materially successful or we are enjoying the diamond cushion of legendary success, we forget one rule of life that reinforces—historically and cruelly—that success in one part of life doesn't compensate for the neglected, poor and totally absent substance in another part. We forget balance while enjoying the high velocity of the roller-coaster existence of stardom. We relegate crucial matters of our intimate affairs of life to a total stranger who handles them like they are his job, but he is not living inside the skin of consequences.
Contrary to our strongly held hyper-confidence, we are the most vulnerable when at the top of everything.
I have read an idea in a classical Chinese book of wisdom, Tao Te Ching. It says something like this: both failure and success are instability. What it meant was that vulnerability is the common factor in both conditions. While the poor have nothing to lose except their biological existence, the world doesn't care or pay any attention to them. But once you have everything to lose, the jealous neighbors of your palatial home are actively looking for a hole to sneak a rat inside so that it brings back your diamonds. There are industries running to profit from the unstable conditions of the rich and famous. Even if you are doing fine, you can't avoid sabotage from inside when jealousy is running in tandem with your rising graph of success.
To avoid such historical and legendary painful exits, we need to implement two things while enjoying the moments of success: the first is listening to honest criticism in private sessions and improving upon the repeated mistakes every three to six months; and the second part is that we shall invest in a few relationships that survive the downfall of stardom. Only those who don't worship money or the rising sun can be true companions in the flooded wreckage of such a life. Those who occupy the drawing room of abundance will be the first to leave the sinking ship, like rats do, once a crack begins to show in that stardom. But those who value a person as a friend and a fellow human being will be there when the sun goes down, as darkness is the sky of truth shared by the broken souls.
”Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
Oscar Wilde
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©2026 Zarion Zory. All rights reserved. First published on 8 June, 2026 via Substack.
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