Let me start out by saying that I don’t consider myself a genius, but to quote a cartoon figure with a penchant for picnic baskets, I am ‘smarter than the average bear’. I have lived long enough to realize that this is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I have been able to better my lot in life by the application of my intelligence, but a curse because sometimes I think I am smarter than I am.
To quote Albus Dumbledore, "In fact, being--forgive me--rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger".
It’s been said that to err is human. We all make mistakes. It’s how we react to those mistakes that separate us. But the wisest people are the ones who can see the mistakes that they are making, or going to make, and either change what they are doing or avoid the mistake completely. Some of the wisest people I know seem to do very little but when they do act, they act with precision and accuracy, and they seem to win a lot more than they lose.
But sometimes doing nothing is the hardest thing to do, especially when you believe that you should be ‘smarter than this’.
But as I constantly tell coaching clients, smart will only get you so far. In fact, intelligence without wisdom is the most dangerous combination in the world, except for intelligence without empathy. Those who cannot empathize with another are a danger to everyone, whereas those who are intelligent without wisdom are more often than not a danger to themselves.
Thankfully I can empathize, but sometimes I lack the wisdom to see where I am hurting myself.
I once heard it said that ‘we cannot read the label on our own jar’, which I think is a fantastic metaphor for the self blindness that we as human beings are born with. We can see things that are obvious about others, but more often than not we struggle to see those same obvious truths about ourselves, especially if those are truths that we’d rather not be aware of.
Like maybe I’m not as smart (or wise) as I want to think I am.
I once heard it explained a long time ago that intelligence is knowing what to do, and wisdom is knowing whether to do it or not. As someone who has been married almost 28 years as I write this, I can certainly testify that sometimes keeping my mouth shut would have been the wiser course of action. My sweet wife laughed when she read this, and told me it was ok.
But there are days I struggle to be as kind to myself as she is to me.
I think any of us who have spent a measurable amount of time in self reflection will have come to understand that being kind to ourselves, giving ourselves grace for the mistakes that we make so that we can learn from them rather than beat ourselves up for them, is essential to the journey of becoming wise. How difficult that grace can be when we allow our ego to get in the way.
“I am human” is hard to here when your ego is shouting “I should be better than this”.
Our shared humanity is written not only in our achievements, but also in our failings. We tend to judge ourselves so harshly for our ‘failings’, but fail to recognize that we would extend compassion to that ‘failing’ in anyone else. In a vain attempt to protect us, our Ego harms us where our compassion could heal us.
Because compassion towards ourselves is a delicate balancing act, requiring both the intelligence to see what we did wrong, and the kindness to forgive ourselves of our failings, while not allowing them to become an anchor that holds us back.
If we hold our ‘intelligence’ to be sacrosanct, we can never find in ourselves the compassion to heal.
And most of us need healing a lot more than we like to admit.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings