February 04, 2003

What you don't understand

What you don't understand is that nobody believes it. Most people that you meet are able to see through your little game. Some still like you, sure, there are plenty of types of people in this world.

But given enough time most types will hate you. Give enough hours of forced conversation with you, of small little insults from you, of you choosing 'being funny' over 'being nice', of you talking about yourself all the fucking time.

Most don't care how you got your little complex - god complex - but they know that it just doesn't add up. You simply aren't that smart, aren't that good-looking, aren't that nice, aren't that likeable to justify it. And if you were, you probably wouldn't act like it, right?

But maybe this is how it happened. You grew up in a small place, a rural place, but with natural intelligence and a little money. You were just smart enough to think that you were smarter than everybody - the teachers, the parents, the friends.

So when you went out into the big bad world you thought you were a big deal. Turns out that you aren't. But this wasn't going to stop you, after all, you are pretty smart, and so you developed mechanisms to maintain your image. There are ways to appear to be wickedly smart without actually using whatever you have for anything - to make people happy, for example - or to have success. Don't go to class, insult others, know a little about everything, talk a lot about stuff that you do know, you look at people like they are idiots when they say something that you don't understand (they must be wrong, right?), hang out with people who are non-academic and shy, etc.

Then move back into your small world and spend the rest of your life there. By this point it is so ingrained that you can't be corrected, it is almost physically painful for you to experience new things, to learn new things after you have been found lacking. You seek out the familiar, the comfortable. You do a lot of little things.

But here's the problem. In your small little world, you miss the real lessons, the real experience that occurs outside it. Most of life is lived when you aren't in charge, when you don't look good, when you don't anticipate, when you aren't looking out for yourself. When you aren't you. When you live in a world without criticism, without input from the outside, you don't grow.

And one day you will realize this. But for now you irritate, you drive away, and you add to the hate in this world.

February 4, 2003 05:49 PM