I did something stupid

They say if you look back on your past and you don't cringe then you haven't grown. I've been thinking about this a lot lately and the nature of intelligence. I mentioned in a previous post that there's a difference between intelligence in the sense of intellect and intelligence in an emotional sense. In either domain intelligence isn't defined by what you know or don't know, that defines knowledge. Intelligence isn't defined by your experience either, that combines knowledge with practice and subsequently leads to wisdom which combines yet more knowledge with that experience.

Intelligence is defined instead by our approach to solving problems and making sense of situations. Our intelligence is most evident when we apply it to novel situations where prior knowledge doesn't help. So if that's how you define intelligence, how would you define stupidity? If it is the opposite of intelligence and therefore is not a lack of knowledge, a lack of wisdom, or a lack of experience, then what is it? If intelligence is the way we think about things then stupidity in its truest form would be defined as acting without thinking at all which leads us to the conclusion that there's a fine line between impulse and stupidity, if there is a line at all.

I've been thinking about the friendships, the crushes, and the situationships I found myself in throughout my life - I've never had a serious committed relationship with a guy I liked who liked me in return which is why I've not added relationships to that list.

The one thing all of these had in common other than me, was how each came to it's end. In every situation it was a lack of communication that caused the breakdown. In some cases that was communication I withheld for fear of confrontation, I don't like conflict and actively avoid it, even more so if I recognise a reciprocal stubbornness because I know that conflict will never be resolved if engaged.

In other cases though the lack of communication was not a conscious choice, instead it was a result of the fact that I did not fully understand what I was feeling and didn't have the language needed to communicate that internal conflict. Yet more still, in some cases the opposite was true, where sharing too much was the problem; when you have PTSD there's a desire to trauma dump under the guise of honesty - an oxymoron if ever there was one. I've learned to accept that disclosure doesn't require an in depth explanation, and the friendships I have that endured are built upon the understanding that a choice not to share isn't a desire to withhold but a judgement of relevance and the question of whether the other person actually wants or needs to know.

Then there's ignorance, and the question that this level of abstraction poses, just as you judge whether others need to know every detail, you too have to ask at times whether you need to know every detail yourself. In my late teens and early twenties when I met someone new there was always a mutual desire to synchronise, to catch up on each other's life and the story so far, like finding the fourth book in a series and going back to read all the earlier instalments to know the whole story. As I've grown older though somewhere around the start of my thirties my mentality shifted from this desire to synch up to a desire for the CliffsNotes summary, I don't need to know everything just give me the abridged version and anything you think is relevant. This has been met by others with a mutual relief, everyone has baggage and the idea of digging it all up every time you meet someone new can be exhausting.

To add to this, I've had life experiences that I held onto for years with a fixed perspective only to learn from others that perspective was warped, learning the truth my entire experience was turned on its head leaving me to question my sanity. I had experiences that meant a lot to me, and thought they meant the same to others only to find out years later they had no emotional investment. My world view and my life experience was built upon those memories, when that perspective shifted it was like part of my life was rewritten.

The truth is that our perception is our reality, we believe what we conclude based on what we know and understand, but the problem is that this is a subjective reality, whereas the concept of reality itself is objective. Being forced to recalibrate your life experiences causes you to reassess everything you built up upon that perception as a foundation and necessitates a period of deconstruction, and reconstruction. In a way you realise how far from reality your experience deviated and face the uphill task of reintegrating into the real world.

Thinking about the connections I had with others from this new perspective I've realised that I was stupid because I didn't consider my life from the perspective of others. The only thoughts I gave like many others, revolved around what others thought of me, if they judged me, never of the impact on their lives that I was having by simply being myself - the impact you have without thinking. To be clear I'm not talking about the choices we make consciously, and whether we stop to consider their consequences, I'm talking about the osmosis of your presence, how your beliefs, desires, intentions, and overall behaviour shapes those of the people who observe them, the impact you have by the example you set.

The intriguing question that arises then is how many of those people would be better off or worse off never having met me and what does the answer say about me? That's not an easy question to answer, first and foremost because it relies on the life experiences that those who knew me have had since we parted ways, and of those I'm still ignorant. In the second instance it's not an easy question to answer because it requires a level of knowledge of their lives prior to meeting and prescience of the hypothetical future they would have lived through. I know my own life story and my experience and I can't even imagine what way my life would have turned out if I had made different choices along the way - I'm still adamant if given the choice I wouldn't do it all again, if reincarnation is real I don't want to "go again" this is it for me.

I don't think I'm a bad person and I don't think I've ever destroyed someone's life. I know the friendships I have had were often deeply rooted and when they came to an end there was a lot of grief on both sides each time, but grief is the persistence of love beyond the point of loss. How things ended doesn't discount the impact we had on each other, if anything the harder it is to separate the deeper the impact you have had on each other.

The point of this post is not to say that it has taken me 36 years to realise "I'm the problem, it's me" but rather to acknowledge the role my lack of perspective played in shaping my expectations and the disappointment I often felt when things didn't work out the way I thought they would. The friendships I thought would last forever that drifted apart and fizzled out were testament to my naivety, perhaps if I had stopped to consider things objectively I would have realised sooner that those friendships meant more to me than they did to others.

I don't really have a neat conclusion for this post, I'm still in the deconstruction phase where I am reframing my life and considering my experiences from different perspectives. I have no doubt there are people who are better off having met me, but that's mostly because they've told me so, the question is how many would be better off never having met me, there are a few I feel would have been, but it's hard at times to know whether that is an objective conclusion, or one fuelled by depression and social anxiety, self-destructive tendencies and the desire to minimise your own contributions and perceive others as maximised.