What is it like to be dyslexic?

What do Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg and (maybe) Albert Einstein have in common? They’re all dyslexic. Despite those bold-faced names – and so many others, especially in the creative fields, such as Keira Knightley, Octavia Spencer and Magic Johnson – there’s still a stigma attached to it.

“It’s a tag, that we’re stupid or lazy,” says Francesco, a dyslexic Zurich colleague, who, because of that lingering stigma, does not want to use his real name. “It’s a superficial view.”

To be clear, Francesco, who originally hails from Latin America – and from a country that he says is “still in the dark ages when it comes to these issues” – doesn’t feel that he’ll be ostracized in Switzerland or at Zurich Insurance Group, where he is very happy. Instead, he’s worried about how he would be perceived in other European countries where he’s lived and has personal and professional contacts.

“In Northern Europe, they’ve been more understanding about dyslexia,” he says. “They’ve moved on and become more advanced, but other places still see it as a handicap.”

The Mayo Clinic defines dyslexia as “a learning disorder that involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words. Also called a reading disability, dyslexia is a result of individual differences in areas of the brain that process language.”

But continue reading and it says, “Dyslexia is not due to problems with intelligence, hearing or vision. Most children with dyslexia can succeed in school with tutoring or a specialized education program. Emotional support also plays an important role.”

‘A bit like Yoda’

It’s been estimated that approximately 780 million people worldwide are dyslexic – that’s about one in 10 – and around 60 percent are men. Some studies suggest the numbers are even higher. Many go undiagnosed.

Francesco didn’t discover he was dyslexic until he was 28 years old while studying for a master’s in the UK, where, he says, “the society is super open about it.” The university, for instance, first offered diagnostic tests and, if it turned out students were dyslexic, offered a tutor (who was also dyslexic) and more time to finish tasks.

“It suddenly all made sense to me,” says the thirty-something Francesco, who, with his deliberate cadences matched with a short-cropped beard, recalls a dissident Latin American poet in the 1970s.

He admits he wasn’t the greatest student. He read very slowly and that “everything took more time.” Because of that, he says, “dyslexics often don’t catch up. That was me.” He also claims that he says things out of order, “a bit like Yoda,” although he doesn’t during our conversation.

Francesco chose not to tell his father, who he felt might have had a negative interpretation, but did tell his mom, who used to help him read schoolbooks well into his teenage years. When she heard the news, his mother said something to the effect of, “Oh, OK, I guess we missed that.”

He says it’s still laborious for him to read long texts. “It takes me three minutes to read a page, even for a light book. I read ‘War and Peace,’ and I was fully engaged with it, but it was three minutes per page. And I can take, I don’t know, ‘Bambi,’ and it can still take three minutes per page.”

Making weird connections

Despite all that, he still got by and was able to study in the universities he wanted. “So I knew I wasn’t stupid.” (And hey, he still read “War and Peace,” the 1,300-page Tolstoy opus that most only claim to have finished.)

The first thing he read after he was diagnosed was “The Dyslexic Advantage: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain,” by Brock L. Eide and Fernette F. Eide, both doctors. “That book was important,” he says, “because it helped me to understand that there were just that, advantages being dyslexic.”

Those advantages, to him, include “the ability to think in a spatial way and to make weird connections that are not obvious at first.”

Soon after, Francesco, who was studying design, went to an exhibition celebrating the 80th birthday of the Pritzker-Prize-winning Richard Rogers at London’s Royal Academy of Art. Rogers – who along with Renzo Piano, was one of the architects behind The Centre Pompidou in Paris – only found out he was dyslexic later in life. Francesco could relate.

Then he came across this in the exhibition, a scathing evaluation of the young Rogers from the Architectural Association: “His designs will continue to suffer while his drawing is so bad, his method of work so chaotic and his critical judgment so inarticulate.” (Rogers, a bona fide “starchitect,” got the last laugh.)

From there, Francesco said to himself: “I’ll continue to do my thing. I don’t have to justify myself. I can be patient with myself and manage expectations.

“Richard Rogers was an inspiration for me,” he continues, “not necessarily because I wanted to pursue a career in architecture, but in the sense that he understood what he had and just moved on, played with it and learned how to get around it.”

It surely was a lot to get around. Dyslexics, according to Francesco, can become alienated and they might not find the right opportunities. They often feel as if they have to hide it.

Moving beyond clichés

Many people fixate on the notion that dyslexics see letters out of order, which, Francesco says, is true to an extent, but it’s also a cliché. “Unfortunately, it’s a cliché that doesn’t help, and it’s one we have to move on from. If we want to live in a world where everyone has a space, let’s focus on the good aspects of dyslexia.”

Like spending time in creative terrain, exactly the type of work Francesco does within Zurich. If he’s forced to choose what he reads carefully and has to bear down and concentrate – “almost like entering a meditative state” – it probably makes him a better reader of better material (hence, “War and Peace”).

Not that he dwells on his dyslexia. “For me, it’s not a big deal,” he says. “I don’t think about it. I just mention it from time to time as a fact of my life. I have mentioned it to some colleagues, but it’s always very casual in an informal moment. It’s not that I announce it.”

Asked what he wants the world to know about dyslexics, he says “that it has its strengths – and it’s all about playing to your strengths.”

Then he quotes Albert Einstein, who may or may not have been dyslexic (the evidence isn’t clear) and who may or may not have said the following: “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live it’s whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Francesco continues: “You have to be open and look at the whole person, who they are, what they’re good at, and don’t just put a tag on them.”

And who knows, maybe a dyslexic person, maybe Francesco, will write a screenplay, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise, on the life of Albert Einstein. It might be another “Oppenheimer.”