I wonder if anybody actually really believes that they are smart. I wish I did. I’d be smart if I knew things. Most things that I know I know only because I set out to learn them. That’s the big difference between myself and a lot of other people. Most people learn things they don’t care to know. They’ll read a book only because they have to and so on, and are content to just drift through life with no real awareness to the world or it’s past cultures. That’s the way they want it. Ignorance is bliss!
And that’s okay. Just don’t talk to your buddies so loud when I’m on the bus with you.
I didn’t go to school, and if I had, I would have devoured everything I could have in those text books. It makes me sick even listening to my voice. I can hear my empty head in my voice. The words that clumsily stumble out of my mouth. If you talk to me, you should know that every time I open my mouth, inside I’m screaming at myself to shut the hell up. God bless my heart, I’m just not as intelligent as I wish to be.
There’s more than one kind of *smart,* Noah. There’s Book Smart, the accumulation of knowledge, the sort of thing where you read a lot of books and memorize a lot of facts and the opinions of the authors and then spew them back on a test or in oh-so-cool conversation. That one got me good grades in school but my schooling did not encourage me to think and form my own opinions. I didn’t even realize that until fairly recently, and I expect I’ll always be working on it now.
Then there’s Intelligence, which to me means being able to use whatever information, whatever knowledge, you have, to sort through facts, weigh them and come to your own conclusions. You have that. I love talking with you — you amaze me.
You’re right: we learn best what we go after learning. If you want text books, I can get you text books. What interests you right now?