Parents with a child born at the end of the calendar year often think about holding their child back before the start of kindergarten: it’s hard for … - Malcolm Gladwell

An innate gift and a certain amount of intelligence are important, but what really pays is ordinary experience.

Through these stories, I want to explore two ideas. The first is that much of what we consider valuable in our world arises out of these kinds of lopsided conflicts, because the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty. And second, that we consistently get these kinds of conflict wrong. We misread them. We misinterpret them. Giants are now what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness. And the fact of being an underdog can change people in ways that we often fail to appreciate: it can open doors and create opportunities and educate and enlighten and make possible what might otherwise have seemed unthinkable. We need a better guide to facing giants-and there is no better place to start that journey than with the epic confrontation between David and Goliath three thousand years ago in the Valley of Elah.

We think we can transform the stranger, without cost or sacrifice, into the familiar and the known, and we can’t.