---
title: "What a Great Time to Be Alive: Every Child Is Born a Genius"
description: Dr Marina Nani on Navi Pillay's Nobel Peace Prize, the International Day of the Girl and how self-awareness unlocks the potential in every child and adult.
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-11-09T06:00:00.038Z
updated: 2026-11-09T06:00:00.047Z
canonical: https://richwoman.co/article/what-a-great-time-to-be-alive-every-child-is-born-a-genius
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/rmp-world-edition-125-card.webp
categories: Inspiration
content_type: Letter from the Editor
region: Global
publication: Rich Woman Magazine
schema_type: Article
about:
  - type: Person
    name: Dr Marina Nani
    description: Editor-in-Chief of Rich Woman Magazine, founder of Sovereign Magazine, author of many books, Dr Marina Nani is a social edification scientist coining a new industry, Social Edification....
    url: https://richwoman.co
    sameAs:
      - https://www.facebook.com/marina.awayfromhome
      - https://twitter.com/richwomanmag
      - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-marina-nani-b47608164/
      - https://www.instagram.com/drmarinanani/
      - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCst11hscsdhKSR_gOnAn-Sw
---

Dear Reader,

Two moments in October belong together. On Friday 9th October, [Navi Pillay](https://richwoman.co/article/nobel-peace-prize-2026-navi-pillay), an 85-year-old judge from South Africa, learned in a Nuremberg courtroom that she had won the Nobel Peace Prize. On Sunday 11th October, the United Nations marked the [International Day of the Girl](https://richwoman.co/article/international-day-of-the-girl-2026-end-child-marriage). One celebrates a life fulfilled. The other turns our attention to lives that have barely begun. Between them sits a question every one of us has had to answer: who decides what you are capable of?

Navi Pillay was born in Durban in 1941, the daughter of a bus driver. The country she grew up in had written her limits into law before she could read. It told her which schools, which jobs and which doors were meant for someone like her. She became a lawyer anyway. When no firm would hire her, she opened her own. For years she could defend a client in open court, yet she was not allowed into a judge's chambers. The first chambers she ever entered were her own.

Her life is not a story of luck. It is a story of self-awareness. Long before anyone gave her a title, she knew something about herself that the world around her refused to see. That knowledge did not make the closed doors disappear. It kept her knocking until they opened.

The International Day of the Girl speaks to every child standing at the start of that same story. Each of us, boy or girl, is handed a script early in life. You are the clever one, the difficult one, the practical one. You are not academic. You are not a leader. People like us do not do things like that. Most of these lines come from people who love us and mean well, and most of them are wrong. We carry them for decades all the same, and many of us never put them down.

This is the link I want you to see. Self-awareness and human potential are the two faces of one karmic coin, and the name stamped on it is progress. Potential is everything you could become. Self-awareness is the moment you notice the gap between who you really are and who you were told to be. Without that moment, your potential stays locked away, however great it is. With it, a bus driver's daughter becomes a judge in the world's highest courts.

The coin has a second turn. When you know your own worth, you start to see it in other people. Navi Pillay spent her life listening to people the world had ignored, and on the day of the announcement she dedicated her Nobel Prize to the survivors of the crimes she had worked to bring to justice. Self-awareness never stays private. It shapes how you treat the next person, and that is how one life ends up changing thousands.

So let me bring this home to you, whether you are a man or a woman, 25 or 75. Somewhere inside you there is a line from your childhood that you still believe. It might be 'I am not good with numbers', 'I am not the creative type' or 'it is too late for me now'. Ask yourself who first said it to you, and whether it was ever true.

Then look at the young people around you: your children, your grandchildren, the nephew who has stopped talking at family dinners, the new starter at work who never speaks up in meetings. Notice the scripts being handed to them. Replace one of them with the truth. Tell them what you actually see.

Navi Pillay is 85 and still sits on the bench. Her career did not begin with anyone's permission. It began with a young person who knew who she was. That same knowledge is open to you this week, at any age. Claim it for yourself, and then pass it on.

With gratitude,

**Dr Marina Nani** Editor-in-Chief, Rich Monday Paper