Like my mother, I've been told I'm smart pretty darned near most of my life. It took me a long time to realize that intelligence is the root cause of much of my confusion about how people talk to me and how they act. Even when I knew it, I didn't understand how to get around it. I was who I was, and I wasn't ashamed of people who were not me because I didn't fully comprehend that the attributes I thought should be universal simply were not. I assumed that some people were simply assholes. As it turns out, sometimes they are... and other times, it's because they don't know better or because they feel threatened.
Now that I've finally begun to slow down and find things that I must do that I don't have a natural affinity toward, I'm starting to understand where so many people were coming from. And, having friends who are smarter than I am - or at least, who have abilities that I want and do not possess - has given me the perspective of feeling helplessly stupid. Not stupid as in "why did I not realize that before" but stupid as in I know, there is absolutely no energy in my soul for me to even remotely comprehend how to ever grasp what they so easily grasp. At first this was a failure on my part. Now, I understand, perhaps necessarily, that it is not failure and that the sooner I acknowledge my limitations, the faster I can stop feeling so frustrated and instead plod slowly forth until I succeed or find a way around the obstacle in my path.
It is both remarkably sobering and amazingly inspiring to be in this situation. I am both wisened by experience and challenged by continuous need to learn.
Sometimes part of me wants to be more like Mum and simply give up for the sake of certain principles or out of sheer mental exhaustion, but I have no idea how to do that. The other part of me goes back and forth between wanting to maintain my lifestyle and wanting to pursue my childhood passions that are just now becoming realized and placed before me.
As my life has always been, I am forever caught in a state of dichotomy... both wanting and not wanting, being social and unsocial at the same time, and feeling both passionate and exhausted at the same time.
~nv
2 comments:
That is very wise, mature, and enlightened thinking. I too try to be accepting of my faults and thankful for my abilities.
I also try to keep this quote in mind:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference
Thank you. I love that saying, and the older I get, the more deeply I grasp its essence. It's easy to say it, but harder to live by it.
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