I was idly flipping through my old videos on YouTube today when I came across this blast from the past :
Stop smacking your lips. dammit!
Just look at me. So young, so full of life, so confident. Ah, if only I could go back to those simpler and more innocent days of
*checks date on video*
…September 15, 2014.
What can I say, uit’s been a long three years.
And honestly, everything pre-Trump looks like Eden to me now.
Anyhoo, that video, plus discussing it in therapy today, got me to thinking about those early adulthood days when I was in real danger of becoming an obnoxious snide intellectual bully, and the people who put me on the right path.
They are, in chronological order…
I. The Two Professors
This was my first major wake-up call, and for reasons which will becomke clear, it was very, very effective.
The year : 1992.
The place : the University of Prince Edward Island
The season : Late spring
So I am walking from one class to the next when I am approached by one my philosophy professors, who takes me aside and quietly and earnestly explains to me how I have been dominating class discussions and intellectually muscling people out of the conversation, and how other people with perfectly valid opinions were not being heard because they don’t have as strong a personality/voice as me, and how I needed to learn to rein it in.
This was news to me. I had never thought of it like that before. Growing up as the youngest of 4 kids in a very talkative family, I learned to push hard to be heard at an early age. I was accustomed to having to overcome a certain amount of resistance just to get a word in edgewise. I was quite accustomed to being the intellectual underdog.
The idea that I could be the one forcing others out of the conversation had never occurred to me. I was a far more thoughtful and concerned person after that talk.
But I was still on the fence about the whole thing. After all, I was a brash twenty year old male who was still exploring his powers and his limitations and beginning to develop an image of himself as a potent intellectual. The idea of holding back did not appeal to me. I was feeling my oats and wanted to run wild and free and feel the power of my mighty mind muscles and the wind flowing through my mane.
Oh, have I mentioned that I was a horse back then? Must have slipped my mind.
So there I am, walking between classes for the second time that day, head full of emotions I was trying to sort out, when I get approached by a different philosophy professor of mine, who takes me aside and gives me the exact same talk.
Not word for word, obviously, but identical in substance.
And the thing is, neither of them had any idea that the other one was doing it too. Believe me, I asked. By some cosmic stroke of fate, without any coordination at all, two different profs talked to me about the exact same thing on the exact same day.
That kind of drove the point home. If two profs for whom I had a lot of respect felt the need to tell me about the same problem on the same day, I figured there must be something to it. Clearly, I had to make some changes.
I didn’t want to make those changes. But I am not the sort of person who can ignore his effect on others just to feed his own ego. I always have and always will want to avoid hurting people without very good cause. I could not pretend I didn’t know. And I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t responsible.
Part of me really, really wanted to take that path, though. The path of saying “If they can’t hold their own in an argument, that’s their problem, not mine,. I’m not going to hold back just to save their precious feelings. They should either toughen up or stay out of the discussion. Screw them!”
Or, even more obnoxiously (and I have taken this tack in my life, much to my shame), “Hey, I am just a person with an opinion like anyone else. I’m just doing what everyone else is doing. Why single me out?”.
Because you’re a fucking giant, that’s why. You can’t pretend to be equal to others when you know damned well that you have a massive natural advantage over them. I had been unconsciously using that natural advantage – the fact that I thought faster and deeper and bigger that everyone else – to push people around and bully them into letting me pontificate and stroke my own ego.
That wass completely unacceptable.
So I changed. Somewhat. I learned to respect other people’s opinions, to leave space in the conversation for the shyer, quieter type people, and to pay attention to my body language and vocal tone to make sure I was not unconsciously intimidating people.
Looking back at what a horrible asshole I could have turned out to be, I am filled with gushing gratitude to those two men who took time to take me on (never an easy thing) and make me understand what I was doing.
Without them, who knows. I might have turned into some kind of Ayd Rand moral infant so in love with how smart and clever he is that he constructs an entire philosophy around the message of “I won’t share and you can’t make me!”.
It’s a horrifying thought – I have deep and abiding contempt for that sort of person and feel like it is my mission to destroy them – but I can’t deny the possibility.
I’m just glad I didn’t take that route.
And I am glad that I have always rejected elitism in all forms. Since early childhood, I have known that I have a simply massive mind and a very high IQ.
And still, I rejected the whole notion that this meant I was better than anyone else.
I could never be that blind to the world.
I could never be “that guy”.
I am simply not that kind of person.
And I’m glad.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.