I’ve probably done a lot of it in my life.
Almost never on purpose, of course. Usually just by being my cluelessly clever self. Answer questions too fast and too casually, causing my responses to seem flippant. Solving a complex problem that has been really bothering someone with a clarity and ease which makes them feel like idiots for not seeing the solution themselves. Showing off how bright I am without even consciously knowing I am doing it. Muscling people aside in conversations even though I am following all the rules I set in my head in order to keep me from doing that exact thing.
I guess when you are a giant amongst pygmies, or Gulliver in Lilliput, there is only so much you can do to keep people from feeling small.
Past that point, you have to just shrug and tell yourself you are doing all that you can and that’s all anyone can ask of you.
And if that still makes people feel small, that is their problem.
So I don’t exactly feel guilty for making people feel stupid just by being as bright as I am. If I truly am doing nothing to deliberately hurt them and waiting for my turn in conversations and otherwise being a good boy, then I refuse to take any blame for making people feel bad.
I mean, I would never faulty a professional athlete for making me feel slow and weak. I don’t fault math geniuses for making me feel like I do not get math. I don’t fault highly competent people for making me feel incompetent.
So why would I feel bad for making someone else feel stupid just by being bright?
I have pondered, tongue firmly in cheek, wearing a T-shirt that says “It’s not that you’re stupid, it’s that I am super smart!”.
Somehow, I doubt that would have the desired effect. In my mind, it’s clear that what I am trying to say is that my brightness should not make you feel stupid because you are only stupid by comparison to me, an exceptionally smart dude.
It’s not that you are stupid and I am normal, I imagine saying in a doomed attempt at clarification. It’s that you are normal and I am amazing.
I am sure that your level of intelligence is perfectly adequate to the tasks you perform, I would add, officially turning directly into Sheldon from Big Bang Theory.
Clearly that would not work. Still, I wish there was a way I could get the idea that I am very bright across to people in a non-threatening way.
It would make social interactions a whole lot easier for me. I would be able to give up the pretense of being normal and just be my wacky wizardly self.
Of course, society’s official advice for me would be to just be myself as hard as I can and to hell with the haters.
And that might work. There’s a lot of wisdom in giving up trying to control results and accepting that sometimes, you have to just be yourself and live with the consequences.
And I feel like I am slowly becoming brave enough to do that. It’s not easy for me because I have spent far too long tied to the illusion of control and moving away from that requires a leap of faith and I have very little experience with those.
But knowledge only goes so far. Logic has its limits and reason provides no reason to do anything. Some leaps are clearly necessary.
But I am so very afraid of being the little bird that plummets to its death when it is shoved out of the next and fails to fly.
I guess I better work on that.
More after the break.
The path of weakness
I feel so very weak and fragile most of the time.
And I suspect the main reason is my physical health. if I took better care of myself. Got my diabetes under control, made sure I got a bit of exercise every day, cut a lot of crappy empty carbs out of my diet, got fresh air more often.
Maybe then I would feel more robust and alive.
Ah, but that’s the real problem. I have done that in the past and what ended up happening was that despite telling myself over and over how much better I felt, a voice deep inside was screaming because everything was so much louder and more intense now and I just couldn’t fucking take it.
And so this terrible fear built up under the surface of my mind and gradually but inexorably I fell back into the old bad habits because they are what made the volume go back down to what I consider normal.
You would think I would have gotten used to the new volume level but you would be wrong. No matter how long I kept it up, that deep terror persisted.
In fact, it got worse over time instead.
So as much as I hate this terrible cold dark weak scared feeling that keeps me from getting anything substantial done, I will not be able to overcome it until I find some way to deal with the volume issue without losing my freaking mind.
Turning the volume up very, very slowly sounds good on paper but I have no idea how to implement that. Exercise a tiny bit? Put slightly more nutrition into my diet? Leave the window open for two minutes a day?
I have very little patience for tiny increments like that. I am a big picture type and such itty bitty baby steps drive me insane.
The other answer would be to go with my expansive nature and just throw open all the windows and doors of my soul and let all the sensory input in and force myself to deal with the situation all at once.
But that seems doomed to failure to me.
So I don’t know. Maybe I will ask my therapist when he comes back next Friday.
Then again, I will probably have forgotten all about this by then.
My life is really, really stupid.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.
“I have very little patience for tiny increments like that. I am a big picture type and such itty bitty baby steps drive me insane.”
Changing who we are is a lot like driving on ice. In defense of incrementalism, there’s little traction against the powerful gravity of entrenched habits and comfort zone(s). Like mashing the accelerator on ice, brute force of willpower probably won’t work because your brain is (at any given time) wired to resist change and will sabotage everything you try. You just spin out and feel worse than before you started.
A direct attack is hopeless because you’re doing battle with yourself. Instead, you have to trick your mind into changing in the desired way via small goals and self-reward. At least this is my life experience.
Getting the car rolling is not the tiny step that it might seem when viewed in big-picture mode.
An example from my own life:
I realized one of my big life problems was big-time lack of energy, and that was one of the limitations holding me back the most. Well how TF to do anything about that? You can’t just will yourself more energy.
One obvious thing would be to “lose weight”, but I faced a lifetime of failure losing weight or sticking to exercise, even when pursued with willpower and passion, it was always doomed to fail.
So even this necessary-but-quite-possibly-insufficient step was a likely failure. let alone solving the low energy problem. It would seem to be hopeless.
So I thought “why do I fail to reach my goals despite plenty of determination (until I get demoralized and quit) and with clearly defined goasl like “I will lose weight”?
It’s because “I will lose weight applying willpower and determination” is doomed. So is any attempt to change an entrenched aspect of who you are this minute by force of will. So ripe for self-defeat.
Instead, what worked is setting very small, concrete sub-goals. Measurable, specific actions you can assess in binary terms of “accomplished” vs. “not accomplished. Plan to reward yourself (in a non-self-defeating way) for sticking to it. You may just gradually reprogram your own mind.
. “I will exercise 45 minutes on Monday through Friday and I’ll reward myself with a tablet and Netflix to kill time on the machine. Saving whatever favorite show for watching during exercise time only was the reward that tricked my mind into gradually hating it less and less, until after a while, it went from an activity I loathed and was exhausting to a positive habit. And it was a gradual change in my mind that opened the doors to success, insofar as losing 60 pounds and picking up energy aligned with my big-picture goals..
Yet it was the small goals, intentional rewards, and daily focus on the sustained objective (which wasn’t “lose weight” but merely 45 minutes x 5 regardless of how it affected weight, energy, or mood) and IGNORING the big-picture voice noting how minor and slow the process was, and the big objective kind of took care of itself by virtue of being a good step and retaining FAITH that changing yourself is the larger part of it, and it’s not something that happens directly.
Outsmarting your own mind via reward and habit, and patience with yourself as you plan small realistic changes and ignore the discouraging big-picture voice in favor of the focused detailed goal view while you’re doing it
Incrementalism is too-often dismissed as inadequate, which is true enough insofar as it goes, but where it’s changing you for the better… replacing bad aspects of yourself with good, it could scarcely be more powerful a tool.
You 2.0 is better than the old You 1.0. 2.0 version of you, all conditioned with self-inflicted reward, should be less likely to sabotage your future efforts than You 1.0 would have. Don’t forget to account for that in evaluating your progress. 😀
When you did the million word challenge, did it increase your talent or leave a residue habit of writing more often? That would be an example of what I’m talking about. Establishing new habits that likely help in other ways.
It’s probably a very Japanese outlook, that relentlessly pursuing small improvements pays off holistically in a better product — or a better you, so there’s no such thing as a worthless improvement. It just takes a long time.
Whether that’s true or not, I like to believe this.
All that being said, best of luck with those internal demons. They are nasty fuckers, aren’t they?