The perks of being a polymath
MANILA, Philippines - Summer’s farniente is only beginning in the West, but in our offices and universities, the rains can be a tempting stimulus for resilience, with a revitalizing air of cool productivity, lasting perhaps until the “ber” months.
An ancient proverb from the stock of Warren Buffet is not to leave your eggs in one basket. The complete living diversified portfolio of this in 4D is typically known as a polymath. Nothing new and continues to be more appealing, in borderline style. They toss in a warm knit in specialized fabric, in an office run by zombies in synthetic cotton, in search of incessant ways of doing things better, with distinction. Polymaths have a tolerance for shifting and adapting, if not an obsessive trait extending to the most niche of subjects.
Like the realtor-foodie-blogger-farmer, or journalist-curator, or the graphic designer-art dealer, it’s a win-win marriage of accountability and, connecting the dots, in an outsourcing world. Of course, anything unverifiable could become too good to be true, like the perils of falling into internet identities or simply vaudeville “marketing” — waiting to be a trippy case of caricature (enough to make Cindy Sherman run out of incarnates). Polymaths are to be credited for being able to master and apply their expertise with integrity, for the right reasons, same thought and rigor to many related disciplines. There will only be few Starcks/Wanders of the design world, but with technology as a democratizing platform (and a bit of common sense) many polymaths’ folios can be realized.
June is an opportunity to smell rosy opportunities aligned to your true self (or many selves). Or go through mixing and matching from your personal Rolodex, after adding another entry to your CV. In other words, June is certainly a season of taking out your knits, and ironing out creases, and above all, stepping out from the tablet-screen world, with renewed vigor.
The silly polymath in me always asks what life could have been like if I had lived alternate lives, with the perks of multi-racial upbringing. I could have been a yoga instructor with perfectly spotless English. But being an introvert with a difficult bone structure, with little tolerance for being semi-nude, I probably wouldn’t. But if, like me, 
you cannot help but ponder parallel lives in a distant time zones or, find different outlets to “busy” yourself with, then “It’s not too late to be who you might have been,” with respect to George Eliot.
As I look for my Kindle in glorious triumphs of perfect autonomy, I look back and come to treasure that attending “uni“ or sharing communal workspace, is for the love of bonding with people or following your tribes with people you have the same philosophy. It teaches more tolerance — how each of us is unique and excels at our paths, when face-to-face, the old-fashioned way.
In the creative class, it is the heart of it all. And for the life of staying in school, the value of degrees is not for sitting on the fences, though it is a distinction, forging character is built from multifarious experience, from sitting down in a classroom arduously or relaying weaving instruction to a tribal craftsman, the slow way.
I can vaingloriously imagine many more paths, but in the meantime I must get on with the reality of living life with reminders from Get-it-done (free on iTunes store), which reveals I cannot ever be a dash-bohemian self-styled artiste.
