An open letter to a smart person who likes being a smart person from another smart person who also likes being a smart person.

Dear smart person

Hello smart person, I’m a smart person too. Isn’t that great? I have a high IQ, top marks, and regularly use the words ‘paradigm’ and ‘praxis’ in clever sounding sentences. I also own a fern.

I really like being a smart person – it’s a significant part of my identity. When I was growing up, I was bullied for being ginger, skinny, and mostly ginger. I also knew, however, that I was smarter than the bullies. This is why on my last day of High School I purposely crashed the school computer network, including all of their accounts.

When my ‘smartness’ gets shaken, however, so does everything else about me – like a house of cards built on a bowl of jelly. When people around me don’t ‘get it’, or reduce ideas down to minimal complexity for the sake of a smart-sounding soundbite, I want to throw my abacus right out of the pram! When other smarter people out-smart me by their clearly superior smartness, then I want to throw myself out the pram.

Sometimes it’s just hard being smart. Here, therefore, are a few tough life lessons for fellow smart people from a smart person.

1. Smart doesn’t need to equal arrogance. I find this really hard (see everything above)! However, you can dial up one without dialling up the other. It’s possible – trust me!

1, again… but said better. Smart people don’t actually need to be jerks.

2. A smart thing to do is to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. A really smart thing to do is surround yourself with people who are smarter than you and disagree with you. If you’re the smartest person in the room, you probably need to be in a different room.

3. Being smart has very little to do with being right. It has a lot to do with being considered. Being smart has even less to do with being in charge.

π. Being smart sometimes makes you very stupid. And that’s ok.

4. Properly smart people ask more questions than they give answers. They also like to think about their answers before they give them.

5. Smart people usually like nuance not absolutes.

6 through 10. Smart linguistic thinking is different to smart critical thinking, which is different to smart social understanding, which is different from smart proactive thinking, which is different from smart reactive thinking. This is different from smart abstract thinking, which is different from smart mechanical analytical thinking. This is different to smart thinking under pressure, which is different to smart problem solving, which is different from smart creative solution finding (honestly). This is different from smart observing clearly, which is different from smart tracking ideas clearly, which is different from smart opening ideas up, which is different from smart narrowing results down. This is different from smart doing well with details, which is different from smart being a ‘big picture person’. You get it? Being smart doesn’t mean being ‘smart.’

11. Smart thinking has as much to do with the theory and method of thinking (epistemology) as it does to the contents of what is being thought. It’s smart to know that not everybody does this.

12. Smart people need to be patient! Very patient. Silly Patient.

13. Smart people understand that others are probably being very patient with them.

14. Smart people will be very lonely people if they can’t learn to be compassionate people. They will also be lonely if they can’t develop a – sometimes silly and pointless – sense of humour and know when to switch off.

15. Smart people know when to switch off.

16. Smart people know when to switch off.

17. Smart people know there is someone smarter than them somewhere in the world, and will find that smarter person, kill them, and eat their brains. Really smart people know there is someone smarter than them somewhere – and will deal with it.

18. Smart people know that they don’t need everyone to know they are a smart person (I’m really working on this… although this letter probably isn’t helping).

19. Smart people don’t need to make other people feel stupid. In fact, if they’re being smart then they really shouldn’t.

20. Smart people use their brains to change the world along with the rest of the world who are using their own gifts. They don’t just comment on it from their keyboard in their pyjamas.

That reminds me, I’ve got stuff to do.

Thanks folks!

Sincerely

Smart person.

Photo by Olav Ahrens Røtne on Unsplash