On reflection, I\u2019ve realized that a source of trouble in my life has been that I truly have not realized that I\u2019m so smart that I confuse people. I haven\u2019t meant to do this, but I really didn\u2019t know. I was bewildered by the responses. <\/p>\n
I remembered the movie, \u201cOf Mice and Men,\u201d in which the slow-witted Lenny \u201cloved\u201d a little puppy so much that he hugged it to death. Ah. My strength was in the rapidity and breadth of my mind, which I really didn\u2019t know was anywhere near as \u201cstrong\u201d as it was. My family thought of me as either obnoxious or a \u201csmart aleck.\u201d Ah, the power of a misleading \u201cdiagnosis\u201d! I knew there was something wrong with me, that I was somehow bad, tiresome, but it never occurred to me that what they were labeling was the only way they knew how to interpret my intensity and occasional na\u00efve over-exuberance. What never occurred to me was the possibility that I might actually be smarter than they were. I mean, I knew I wasn\u2019t that smart compared to all that I knew I didn\u2019t know, such as how to get people to like me. Could it be that they weren\u2019t all that smart?? Nah. Well, now, maybe.<\/p>\n
Looking back, not knowing I was very smart and that consequently I needed to tone myself down has been part of a number of my failures or problems in life: I was overly exuberant and didn\u2019t realize how much this pushed the buttons of those who were more low key. How could I be so evidently bright and yet so insensitive? Thinking either-or, they figured that I meant to be a bit cruel.<\/p>\n
What I didn\u2019t know was how defensive, lonely, disoriented and tight most humans were, and I didn\u2019t see that they were temperamentally more reserved. One of my supervisors was right when he said that I didn\u2019t seem to know how sick some patients were, but on reflection I realize he was also talking about the professional staff that were put off by exuberance. It was also confusing because it seemed that in many other settings my positive attitude evoked more healing than a more negative or neutral attitude.<\/p>\n
It was a foolish mistake, I now realize, but understandable, because people didn\u2019t tell me straight that they were confused by me. I suspect that they weren\u2019t conscious of why they were put off. Now I see that I was indeed \u201ctoo much,\u201d too cheerful, too intense. I don\u2019t blame them for being annoyed, but I really didn\u2019t understand what I was doing wrong until much later. I thought most folks were like me, but perhaps just a bit shy about showing it. Wrong. Ah, well, life lessons sometimes take decades to get right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On reflection, I\u2019ve realized that a source of trouble in my life has been that I truly have not realized that I\u2019m so smart that I confuse people. I haven\u2019t meant to do this, but I really didn\u2019t know. I was bewildered by the responses. I remembered the movie, \u201cOf Mice and Men,\u201d in which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1677,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676\/revisions\/1677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}