Tom Cruise, Steve Jobs, Steven Spielberg, Albert Einstein, Richard Branson and Their Disability

Tom Cruise, Whoopi Goldberg, Steve Jobs, Steven Spielberg, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Beethoven, Richard Branson, Magic Johnson, Leonardo da Vinci, Winston Churchill, Tommy Hilfiger, Muhammad Ali, George Washington, Henry Ford, Woodrow Wilson, Alexander Graham Bell, Pablo Picasso, Agatha Christie and many others have something common to them; they are all dyslexics.

What this means is that they apparently at one point in their life struggled with a particular disability. But what is unarguable today is that they overcame the disability and are/were among the most successful or famous people in the world.

Why am I writing about famous people with dyslexia? I recently wrote about Ryan Blair, who went from being a gangster to becoming a multi-millionaire. In one of his interviews that I read, Ryan disclosed that he was diagnosed of attention deficit disorder (ADD) and dyslexia early in life and was told that he did not possess the intellect or aptitude to become a doctor or lawyer but ironically, today, he employs doctors and lawyers. So I decided to search the Internet for successful or famous people who were diagnosed of dyslexia.

What is dyslexia? The Encarta dictionary defines it as a learning disorder marked by a severe difficulty in recognising and understanding written language, leading to spelling and writing problems. It adds that dyslexia is not caused by low intelligence or brain damage. Thus, dyslexia is a difficulty with reading and spelling and it is not an intellectual disability. There is no cure for dyslexia, but dyslexic individuals can learn to read and write with appropriate education or treatment.

Those who don’t know better see people with dyslexia as dumb and dyslexics are often labeled stupid and unable to learn. It is painful that often times, dyslexics accept that they are stupid and unable to learn. But research seems to point out that dyslexics are often more brilliant and possess far superior abilities in some areas than non-dyslexics or ‘normal people’.

My aim of writing this piece is to encourage anyone with any type of disability to strive to overcome such disability and not to succumb to the limitations that such a disability may seem to have imposed on them. I will also add that all of us have disabilities in at least one area. This is what we have come to call weaknesses. Personally, my disability is in the area of mathematics or calculation. We should not let our weaknesses prevent us from being what we can be. We should focus on our strengths and develop them to such an extent that society will be unable to ignore us.

Listen to the secret of a dyslexic, John Irving, an award-winning writer, “To do anything really well, you have to overextend yourself. In my case, I learned that I just had to pay twice as much attention.  I came to appreciate that in doing something over and over again, something that was never natural becomes almost second nature.  You learn that you have the capacity for that, and that it doesn’t come overnight.

I also believe that the realisation that we all have our disabilities will make us tolerant of people with glaring disabilities.