Yeah, we’ll be talking about that again.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this “innocence” of mine. The kind that makes me feel like I choose not to participate in human status struggles and thus somehow be safe from them.

Because, you know, I am beyond such petty things. (Yeah right. )

But that doesn’t I remain unaffected by them, any more than being a pacifist will save you from a bullet to the brain. And I am increasingly sure that my trying to remain untouched by such things is a big part of why I’m having so much trouble growing up.

Plus, now that I am aware of this attempt at willful ignorance on my part, of my desire to simply bury my head in the sand and pretend like none of that status stuff exists for me, I can no longer tolerate it. Ignorance is the enemy and always has been. I can no longer pretend I don’t know what is going on. I have been falling back on that kind of false ignorance for far too long.

“But I don’t know what to do!” I would whine. Bullshit. You know exactly what to do. You’re just not willing to do it, and thus you are foolishly waiting for some non-scary non-difficult entirely pleasant and simple option to manifest itself.

And until then, you will do…. nothing. Nothing but the bare minimum your life asks of you. No new roads, no fresh trails, no exploration, no desire, no passion. Just… passing the time.

Back to the intimidation thing. Part of the problem is that I have no idea what it is like to meet someone like me because I’ve never met anyone like me. Not in a truly deep sense. I know plenty of people with whom I have a number of things in common and I have friends with whom I have a lot in common, but as far as I can tell, there is nobody truly like me in the world.

How I would love to be proved wrong on that!

There’s nobody who thinks like I do, who sees what I do, who has the kind of intelligence I have. I am a one-off, a mutation, possibly even a mistake. Through genetics and circumstance, I ended up with far more intellectual horsepower than I have the ability to drive, and so here I am, brain the size of a planet, and I used it for…. nothing.

Nothing of substance, anyhow.

Once more back to the intimidation thing. My mind keeps wandering off on tangents. That’s how much I dislike talking about this kind of thing.

So I don’t know what it is like to meet someone who is a hell of a lot smarter than you. Like I have said before, plenty of people can do a lot of things that I cannot with their brains, and I admire and respect those people, but those people don’t strike me as far more intelligent than me.

They just specialized in areas I have not.

In order to picture what it might be like for an average person to meet me, then, I have to use my imagination and my writer’s ability to put themselves in the shoes of another.

I can understand how it might seem to others that I send mixed signals. On the one hand, I am extremely intelligent, and that would cause a lot of people to fear and/or mistrust me. That is natural. It must also cause some people to feel threatened or challenged, and that’s natural too. A lot of people have a lot invested in how smart they are, myself included, and if I met someone who clearly outmatched me, wit for wit, I would feel threatened by them too.

Also kind of turned on, but that’s not important.

And I know I have faced challenges from people who felt threatened by me. They felt safe in doing so because of the other half of the mixed message : I am a peaceful, humble person who doesn’t want to threaten anyone. I just want everyone to get along and be happy. I am perfectly happy with coming across as harmless, because I am. I don’t want to hurt people. Most of the time, I am absolutely no threat to anyone, at least, not intentionally.

So when these challenges happen, I deflect them as best as I can, but that’s harder than it sounds, because while I am happy seeming harmless, I absolutely refuse to pretend I am any stupider than I really am.

Plus, I am that rare kind of person who has no problem admitting they don’t know something. Nothing good ever comes out of pretend you know more than you do, so I don’t. And I feel no shame in admitting it.

Which means that someone challenging me wins…and yet, doesn’t, because I don’t act like I lost anything. It’s hard to feel dominant over someone who doesn’t care that he lost, and who is behaving exactly the same way he did before the battle.

I end up giving the signal that I don’t care that I lost because such things are petty and sad and don’t mean anything, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I immediately resume trying to get along and be friendly with people and send out those signals of being harmless and nonthreatening, I suspect a few people might have smacked me.

So I am dominant. Except I don’t act like it. I am threatening. And yet, I’m not. I clearly could take over. But I don’t.

And people just don’t know what to make of me.

I know I will never be the kind of person who wants to muscle others out of the way and take over. The very idea of being that kind of person nauseates me. How petty! How small-minded! How inane! How… embarrassing!

But maybe I could learn to accept some of the natural leadership that is bound to come my way anyhow. At the very least, I have to take responsibility for my gifts instead of pretending they are no big deal and stumbling around like a clumsy giant.

Time to own up to what I’ve got.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.