Do you think you are just slower than the people you love? It is the kind of question that you do not ask at a dinner party and you do not bring it up when you are out for drinks because it feels like admitting that your brain was built with a few gears missing.

You watch your friend or your brother or your wife look at a problem and they solve it in two seconds while you are still trying to find where the start of the string is. They smile and they tell you that it is just easy or they say they have a feel for it and that is the moment where the air gets thin. You start to think that there is a wall between you and the rest of the world and on one side are the people who just get it and on the other side is you.

The Illusion of the Sharp Eye

Bea sat at the kitchen table and she had a red pen in her hand and her brother Sam had a blue one. There were six dots on the paper and they were drawn in a circle like the numbers on a clock and they looked harmless enough.

They were playing a game where you connect the dots and you try not to be the person who makes a triangle in your own color. It was the 8th time they had played that night and it was the 8th time that Bea had lost. She looked at the blue lines that Sam had drawn and they looked like a cage and she looked at her own red lines and they were a mess. She asked him how he did it and he just tapped his temple and he said you either see the shapes or you do not and it is just a matter of having a sharp eye.

Searching for Power in the Small Spaces

I spent 23 minutes in a stuck elevator last Tuesday and the walls were made of brushed steel and the light was so steady it felt like it was mocking me. When you are trapped in a small space you start to look for patterns because you want to feel like you have some kind of power over the box.

I looked at the seams in the metal and I looked at the way the buttons were lined up and I tried to find a rule for why the thing had stopped between the 4th floor and the 5th floor. It felt exactly like being stuck in a game you do not understand. You are moving your hands and you are making choices but you are actually just waiting for the end to happen and you have no say in how it goes.

David W. is a voice stress analyst and he has spent 1420 hours listening to people who are trying to hide the truth and he told me that the most common lie is the one where a person pretends that a hard-earned trick is just a gift from God.

“When a person claims they are just naturally good at something their voice often gets a little bit airy and they look away because they are protecting a small hoard of gold.”

– David W., Voice Stress Analyst

They do not want you to know the rule because if you know the rule then they are not special anymore and they are just a person who read the manual before you did.

The Hidden Counting Game

The game they were playing is called Sim and it is a classic because it seems like there is no way to predict what will happen next. Most people think it is about being smart or being able to see ten moves ahead but that is a lie that the winners tell so they can keep winning.

There is a specific way to look at the board and it is not about seeing triangles at all. It is about counting the lines that do not make a triangle and it is about keeping track of a number that never changes. If you know how the lines work you can see the end of the game before the second move is even made.

The Fairness of the Kitchen Table

Sam is not a genius and he is not a master of the visual arts but he is a guy who knows that there are 15 lines in total in that game. He knows that if he can force the game to go a certain way he can make sure that Bea is the one who has to draw the 15th line or the 14th line and he knows that the person who has to close the last gap is almost always the one who loses.

He does not tell her about the safe-move counting strategy because then she would be as good as him and then the kitchen table would just be a place where they play a fair game. It is much more fun for him to be the magic man who sees the hidden world.

Status and Secrecy

We see this in every part of life and we see it in the office where the guy who is good at spreadsheets never shows you the formulas he uses. We see it in the gym where the woman who is in great shape says she just eats whatever she wants and she has good genes.

It is a way of holding onto a bit of status in a world that feels very crowded and it is a way of making sure that you have a head start. Naming the method is a gift and it is an act of love but keeping the method secret is a way to stay on top of the pile.

I thought about this while I was in the elevator and I wondered if the repairman was sitting at a desk somewhere and he was laughing because he knew exactly which wire had snapped. He knew the rule of the machine and I was just a guy in a box. When the doors finally opened and I walked out into the lobby I felt like I had been let out of a trick.

I went home and I looked up the rules for the game that Bea was playing because I wanted to see if Sam was really as smart as he looked. I found out that there is no such thing as a draw in that game and someone always has to lose.

I found out that the math behind it was solved a long time ago and it is part of a thing called Ramsey theory which sounds very heavy but it is just a way of saying that in a big enough mess you will always find a pattern.

If you want to stop losing then you have to stop believing that your friend is a wizard and you have to start looking for the manual. You can learn how to play sim game and you can see the count for yourself and you can realize that the only difference between a master and a loser is a bit of reading.

The Ten-Minute Lead

It is a strange thing to realize that most of the people we admire are just people who got there 10 minutes earlier. We give them titles and we give them money and we give them our respect because we think they have a light inside them that we do not have. But usually they just have a map.

Sam sat there and he watched Bea struggle and he enjoyed the way she looked at him with wonder and that was worth more to him than being a good brother. He wanted the mystique and he wanted the win and he was willing to let her feel small to get it.

Keys and Patterns

I think about the 23 minutes in the steel box and I think about how much easier it would have been if there was a sign on the wall that explained why the lift had stopped. Information is the thing that lets us breathe and it is the thing that takes the fear out of the dark.

The next time Bea sits down with her brother she will know about the 15 lines and she will know about the safe moves and she will see that his blue pen is not a magic wand. She will see that it is just a tool and she will see that the game is just a system of rules that can be broken down and understood.

She will probably not tell him that she knows the trick because there is a bit of joy in catching a person in their own trap. She will let him think he is winning and then she will watch his face go pale when he realizes that he is the one who has to draw the last triangle.

We are all stuck in elevators of one kind or another and we are all looking at the buttons and hoping that they will take us where we want to go. The people who tell us that the buttons work by magic are not our friends.

The people who show us the wires are the ones who actually want us to get to the top floor. It is better to be a person who knows the sum of the lines than a person who believes in the mystery of the shape.

I used to think that being a good person meant being a person who was talented but now I think it just means being a person who is willing to explain how things work. It is easy to be a king in a world of people who are guessing but it is much harder and much better to be a teacher in a world of people who know the truth.

David W. told me that the most honest sound a human can make is the sound of a secret being told and I think he is right. It is a flat and heavy sound and it has no song in it but it is the only sound that actually sets you free from the game.