I am a genius. Literally. I have an IQ of 160. I got straight A’s in school (except for handwriting, gym and art). I am naturally gifted at reading, mathematics and problem solving. I started reading in preschool. I was the smartest kid in class for all of my grade school and high school years. In college, I took honors courses and made Dean’s list every semester.
According to the statistics, I’m in the top .5-2% when it comes to intellect.
I’m lucky – I was born this way.
Being a genius doesn’t make me better than other people. But it makes it easier for me to learn independently. It makes it easy for me to excel in academics. It made it easy for me to forge a career in a highly technical field. It makes me adaptable. It helps navigate through life and avoid pitfalls.
Even though I’ve always known I was smarter than most people, I stopped paying attention to this after high school. In school it was obvious. I had classmates who struggled with reading, writing, math and concepts that I grasped immediately. I felt bad for them.
In the working world, intelligence seemed to matter less. In fact, I saw many examples of people who were more successful than me due to their ability to socialize, to navigate corporate politics, due to luck, connections and reasons other than intellect.
As an adult, I learned to appreciate many other forms of genius.
- My wife was a genius regarding interpersonal relations. She was a mensch who put everyone around her at ease. She was horrible with math and it didn’t matter.
- My best friend is a genius with carpentry. He can build anything from wood – cabinets, shelves, windows, floors, walls, corn hole boards and play sets. He hasn’t read a book in 30 years.
- In band, there was a kid named Tyrus who played the drum set like he was born with sticks in his hand. He was in a touring band as a teenager.
- On my wresting team, we had several All Americans and Olympians. Many of them could barely pass their entry level college courses.
So I don’t pay as much attention to intellect anymore.
But I do notice it.
I am drawn to intellectuals. I like to work for people who are smarter than me. I like to have discussions with people who can grasp complex concepts and who like to have meaningful discourse on weighty subjects. I like engineers and introverts and thinkers.
Sometimes I forget that not everyone thinks the way I do.
In my day to day life, I occasionally have conversations where I am left thinking, “What is the person thinking?” “How can they believe this?” “I’m shocked they said that.“
When this happens it’s not because of some political disagreement or impolite thing they said. These people are my friends and acquaintances. They are generally educated, well mannered and friendly.
But they will say things like:
- I don’t understand how to do my taxes which is why I pay someone else to handle it for me. I would never understand how to use TurboTax. This includes many people with basic taxes who file a 1040EZ or a simple 1040.
- I don’t think about that. A surprising number of people never think about things that I spend a lot of time thinking about such as: the meaning of life, purpose, death, philosophy, logic, reasoning etc.
I hear a lot of wishful, magical thinking. People default to religious ideas, political positions, marketing spiels and “conventional wisdom” instead of using their minds to test ideas and come up with principles regarding their lives.
I find this baffling.
I’ve had friends who were not smart – but most of my closest friends are quite intelligent. I’ve dated women who weren’t smart – but my longterm relationships were all with smart women. I’ve had bosses who were not smart – but the best ones were all highly skilled and intellectually solid.
At the time, I didn’t think about intentionally choosing people in my life based on intelligence. In retrospect, I must have. Either I gravitated toward intelligent people or once I found them, I stuck with them.
I’m not sure where I am going with this post today. I have no neat and tidy conclusion or argument to make. I’ll come back to it again and update it if I do.
*Note – The post title is a play on the phrase used in the movie The Sixth Sense.