I’ve always had more brains than I knew what to do with.

That’s not the first time I’ve said that and it won’t be the last.

Because it’s true. My intellectually capacities have never been put under serious strain, let alone be truly taxed. Even in university and at VFS, my abilities were not particularly put under strain.

I am capable of so much more. But life has never asked it of me and I am not yet capable of demanding it of myself.

To be honest, I don’t even know what that would look like. I mean, I’m a finite being with finite capacities, so there must be things which are within my abilities in kind but beyond them in scope, but I cannot imagine what they might be.

Because I have never encountered them. There is the rare anomaly like that linguistics course where I crashed and burned due to nobody being able to properly explain things to me in a way that didn’t rely on my understanding other things they couldn’t explain.

In that case, I was a victim of my own inability to proceed when I don’t understand something. Process halt, logic error, will resume on correction.

But for the most part, I have easily dominated whatever the academic world has thrown at me. Didn’t even have to think about it. Came naturally to me.

So no wonder I can’t imagine what being challenged is like. I have no basis for comparison. It has yet to happen.

And I suppose another type of person might decide to just sit back and glory in their own ineffable awesomeness, smug in the sure knowledge of their superiority.

But… ick. Not only does that sound fatuous and obnoxious and gross, it also seems boring as hell.

So another solution would be to venture out into the cosmos in search of challenge and adventure and really wild stuff.

Which sounds about right. But then I am faced with that infinite hallway of infinite doors again. I would have to pick a direction (or an arena, or a cause, or whatever) and I don’t have the kind of chutzpah to do that yet.

Maybe after my operation, I won’t be so damned weak.

Talked with my surgeon Doctor Nuen (sp?) this morning. We talked over options and what is going to happen to me.

He freaked me out by saying there was a 2 to 3 percent chance of death…. as well as other complications like infection, kidney issues, and so on.

Phew! I was sweating there for about five minutes before he clarified.

I mean, even if my odds of survival were that bad, my odds of survival without the operation would be a whole lot worse, so I would still have gone with it.

But still. Phew!

He says that I will be in the hospital for 4-5 days after the operation and that the operation will come in a month or two.

Fine. I am totally on board with this now. It could happen tomorrow for all I care.

Rewinding a thread, I still don’t know what to do with all this brain power.

Take over the world?

I’ll give it some thought.

More after the break.

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Would I give it up?

This towering intellect of mine, that is? Would I give it up in favor of a normal IQ if it meant I finally got to be happy?

Well…. no. Tempting, but…. no. It’s far too big a part of me to give up.

I mean, in theory, nothing could be more important that happiness and therefore happiness is worth whatever it costs you, no matter how steep the price.

But in reality. even if you thought you might be happier without it, you still wouldn’t give up your right arm.

It’s just too big a price to pay for anything, even happiness.

Sure wish I could turn it off now and then, though. Maybe that’s why so many of us sensitive artistic types end up getting addicted to drugs and booze.

We use them as ways to make ourselves stupid enough to relax for once.

It sounds like a joke but it’s also true.

Of course, the other solution is to somehow tame and harness these wild brains of mine so that they don’t cause me so much pain from being underused.

Which sounds a lot like the more cerebral angle of spiritual growth to me. The whole deal with expanding your mind and connecting to the cosmic consciousness and all that good ol New Age stuff.

I mean, at least on paper, encompassing the universal vibration and feeling the heartbeat of creation that drives the breath of life in all living things throughout the universe should be enough to keep anyone’s mind busy, right?

God I hope so. To find out otherwise would be devastating.

I’d be willing to follow the teachings of a guru in theory.

I don’t consider myself to the the most enlightened, wise, or smart person in the world, after all. at least on good days.

But in practice, they would have a very high bar to clear. They would have to convince me that they truly know something I don’t and that they can teach me that something if I can just sit down and shut up for long enough, and listen.

They would need to be able to ask me a question I can’t answer because it’s something I have never thought of that way before.

More or less the same thing I want in a therapist, really.

If they can do that, they can at least get me to listen to them.

If they can do it more than once, I might just hang around a while.

If they can do it regularly, I might just call them sensei.

I mean, there must be wise people out there who know how to handle people with out of control monkey brains like me.

People who grasp what it’s like to feel like the conductor on an out of control train.

People who might even know how to get that sumbitch back under control.

Maybe even know how to get it to slow down enough to let me off.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.