I've always thought of intelligence as a wonderful characteristic to have in your pocket - to pull out in a quandary, to assist in perplexing situation, to complete insanely difficult logic puzzles. But lately, I'm beginning to find it is a liability and not an asset.
People tend to think that if you are intelligent, you are always plotting some underhanded scheme or that you have ulterior motives in your actions and words. Now, this may be the case if you work in Intelligence but I don't necessarily think it's true if you are just intelligent.
Recently, I had expressed something I didn't want to do to my husband. A few hours later, I got viciously sick because I had drunk something that didn't agree with me (something that never does but that is neither here nor there). So it turned out in the end that I didn't do the thing that my husband wanted me to do. At the time, he said nothing about it. But recently, he made a comment about it saying 'Fortunately, no, I mean unfortunately, you got sick' so then I didn't have to do that thing that he wanted to do and that I said I wouldn't. This Freudian slip pissed me off for a number of reasons:
#1) Truly, if I didn't want to do something, I just wouldn't do it. I'm stubborn enough to put my foot down on many an occasion. But to suggest that I planned getting sick all along to get out of doing something is really a big cruel.
#2) This suggestion/slip also means that my husband tends to think that when I am sick, I must be faking it. My dearest, I really wouldn't bother faking that. There are a million other things I could fake and that just isn't one of them. I sincerely try to not have to force myself to throw up in order to feel better.
#3) This really makes my blood boil....in saying this, I realize that my husband is no better than his family that flies off the cuff about every little thing before thinking the consequences through. Yes, so I'm intelligent. I know enough than to say heartless things to people to hurt them. I sit and think about how I would feel in the same situation. If being nicer and thoughtful comes from my intelligence, then I'll gladly accept. But if you think that my intelligence means I'm concocting some insane attempt at manipulation, then you really don't know me.
What I've learned from my experience is that it's never the people that I think are intelligent who scheme to get ahead in the world. It's the people who think they are smarter than everyone else. They think they can pull the wool over everyone's eyes and people are none the wiser. Those are the people you have to watch out for - the ones who think they are better than everyone else. Not the people who are smart and who also usually are very humble.
1 comment:
I think you make a valid point that those with minimal intelligence are usually those who are plotting and scheming, which makes me think that it probably isn't your own abundant intelligence that's causing your hubby (and perhaps others) to think your actions may have alterior motives. I have found that, especially in trying times, people often attribute to others the motivations and/or actions that they would have themselves in the same situation.
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