Tag: intelligence

Stuck in the Middle with You

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“I’m smart. Not like everyone says. I’m smart, and I want respect.” –Fredo from The Godfather. I love this quote, as anyone who has ever read this site knows. I use it so often that I use it so often, too often, because it just seems to be an evergreen quote that fits so many of my themes. It’s an everyman quote. It’s one of those quotes that if we don’t say it every day, we probably think it. We know we’re not able to figure some things out, but we’re able to figure out a mess of other things, so that should make us smart right?  

What is smart, intelligent, or knowledgeable? It’s a question loaded with so many variables that it’s the literal definition of a loaded question. There are so many forms of human intelligence that it takes a lot of intelligence to understand the definition of intelligence. We all have some figurative schemes of thought that we use to develop images for matters of discussion. If I were to ask you what the elite intellectual looks like, you automatically picture the white lab coat. Researchers conducting tests on individuals know that if they want their subjects to take them seriously, they need to have a closet full of white coats. Ear, nose and throat, family practitioners probably also have a closet full of white coats they wear to presumably put an end to us complaining that they don’t know what they’re talking about. Depending on their goal of leading us to assume they’re smart, they might also want to mess their hair up (a la Albert Einstein), exhibit poor social skills, and thet should probably look like he doesn’t spend enough time outside. Our local car mechanic doesn’t fit any of these bullet points, however, but if you’ve ever sat down with one of them, you know the best and brightest among them have such a wide array of intelligence of their profession that it can be humbling and disorienting to hear them go on. That’s pretty relative you might argue, because we all have our areas. That’s kind of the point though isn’t it? If a man in a lab coat has a spark plug go out in his engine, he’s as lost as the rest of us, and the epitome of relative definition of intelligence. We all have our areas that make us feel smarter than most, but we eventually run across something, someone, or some other person place, place, or thing that makes us feel pretty darn dumb.   

Some of the smartest people I’ve ever met also had another key ingredient that is in short supply: clarity. They not only have a clearer vision of life than the rest of us, they have wisdom based on experience. They’re not afraid, intimidated, or confused by questions, arguments, or refutation. They’re able to roll with the punches, because they’ve already argued with so many people that they know every possible argument for and against. Yet, before we consider those with greater clarity intelligent, we have to consider another variable of intelligence: sensitivity. Most clear-minded people I know suffer from some deficits in emotional intelligence. They know the truth as they’ve experienced it and seen it, but they don’t account for all of the variables that could undermine their version of the truth. Can something be true, if it is only true 99.9 percent of the time? If an emotionally intelligent percent invites anecdotal evidence that undermines that truth, is it still true? There are times when it seems clarity and sensitivity seem to be combatants in the pursuit of truth, intelligence, and knowledge. Most clear thinkers are so lacking in sensitivity that they almost seem robotic, and they view arguments against their views as an attempt to cloud the truth and add confusion, but they don’t alter their views one iota.  

The more succinct definition of intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge. That definition might lead us to seek all of the varying definitions of knowledge, and how we apply it. It doesn’t serve a purpose, but some of us have retained more knowledge about the NFL, from the 80s and 90s, than most of the experts on pregame, NFL shows. Try to stump us. Go! Some of us know more about the show Seinfeld than anyone we’ve ever met. Say what you want about such knowledge, but it is information that we’ve retained, and in some cases used, or applied, as we’ve dropped the show’s jokes in a timely manner that has impressed people. Is it smart though? Will our audiences consider that intelligent? Our friends probably consider retention of such information the definition of intelligence, but how many strangers, who didn’t grow up in the same era we did, will put that information/knowledge on the same level with the man who is intimately familiar with Shakespeare or Chaucer? If you’re anything like me, and you enjoy searching for seemingly impossible answers to questions, you’ll probably end up saying, “I honestly don’t know if I’m smart or dumb. I’m probably Stuck in the Middle with You.” 

“Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right
Here I am stuck in the middle with you
When you started off with nothing
And you’re proud that you’re a self-made man.” –Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan

I’ve met a wide array of writers throughout my life. Some of them exposed for me the difference between the creative term brilliance and the more math and science definition of intelligence. I’ve met brilliantly creative writers who were so good that I was just plain jealous, which led me to try to outdo them with a long stretch of writing. I’ve also met a number of writers who knew the craft so well that they gave me some excellent pointers and valuable information that I still have in my head whenever I write. They knew the ABCs of writing so well that it was a little surprising to learn they were actually average-to-poor writers. When I see them now, I call them editors. Editors can spot all of the errors of the creatives, and their approach to writing can be so oriented in fact that it takes all the fun out of writing. Most of them don’t do it to be mean, better, or correct, it’s just the way their mind works. They’ve learned the craft by studying the masters, and if we run into a wall, they can provide helpful advice based on their studies. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, but most of them don’t know their limitations. It seems to me that they know masters’ masterpieces, so well that they wouldn’t dare approach the craft in an innovative manner that might violate the tenants laid down by those they deify. They know the masterpieces far better than jokers to the right, and they’re paralyzed by idea that if they can’t top them, why try? Those of us who aren’t as familiar with the literary canon might be dumb enough to think we have something to add to the conversation. Even if we don’t come anywhere close to what editors determine to be quality material, we don’t lie awake at night in fear of a clown from the right dropping the dreaded ‘D’ word, derivative, on us.       

Those of us stuck in the middle with you grew up on KISS, and heavy metal, and we loved the silly, simplistic movies and shows from the 80s and 90s that knew how to get to the point. If we were to ask members of that generation (my generation) I suspect that most of them would say, “It was a pointless era, but who cares, it was built on being fun, funny, and entertaining.” Whatever point these entertainers had, they got to it quick, because they feared belaboring a point might lose them their short-attention span, key demo. Those stuck in the middle with you have those influences loaded in our neurons, firing our synapses. Is that a brag? Some of the songs, shows, and movies from that era were quite innovative, creative, and influential, but no one would confuse memorizing the lines of dialogue from Buggs Buggy and Gilligan, or studying the lyrics of KISS, with an intellectual exercise. Yet, when we combine all of that silly simplicity with an appreciation for the masters of literature, we end up somewhere in the middle.

Those of us in the middle “Started off with nothing”. The “Theys” of our lives helped us form a foundation by teaching us the elements of style, and the rules, but they couldn’t teach us how to deviate. Those deviations defined us in many ways, ways that led us to be a self-made man when it came to writing. We normally equate the term self-made man with success, but the self-made men who ended up anonymous failures are far more numerous. They just didn’t succeed. They were the dreamers who were so delusional they never paid heed to those who told them to give up, because they were making fools out of themselves. The term self-made man is a nebulous one that we could apply to high school graduates and “some college” applicants. We could apply it to artists, craftsmen, and small business owners who had to claw and scratch their way to some relative definition of success. The opposite of self-made man, arguably and debatably, is the college graduate. The college graduate is the product of at least four years of shaping and molding, until he establishes himself in the workplace or office. 

We could also say that the difference between the self-taught, or autodidactic, and the college graduate, or manualdidactic(!), is status. The mindset of the college graduate is that they’ve achieved status, and the self-made man is forever in pursuit of it. If we think about this dynamic in terms of the waiting room for a job interview, the college graduate believes he completed most of the interview on his resume, as he listed out the bullet points of what he did in college. He has achieved knowledgeable status, and he thinks the interview process will be paint-by-numbers after that. The high school graduate and “some college” applicant sits with inferiority complex believing that everyone else in the waiting room is a college graduate. His need to prove himself surely preceded his entrance into the building, as he apprenticed for the job doing grunt work in the field in question. Who will the head hunter in Human Resources view as more intelligent, knowledgeable, and the better candidate in the interview? It’s all relative to the head hunter, of course, but self-taught man knows that the onus will be on him to prove himself in the interview.

When we hear the self-made man talk about his pursuit of success, we often hear them make the dubious claim that, “Everyone was against me,” and/or “Nobody thought I would succeed,” but we could argue that such lines romanticize their struggle. More often than not, no one cared about them when they weren’t doing anything, because why would they? If they cared at one time, it probably took the self-made man so long to get there that everyone just sort of gave up on them. The self-made man probably had a lot of people cheering him on in the beginning, and that probably ignited something in him, but whereas they started giving up on him, he never stopped believing. The self-made man probably thought there was something to it, even when there wasn’t. Whatever stoked his desire to believe in himself took, and he continued to believe in himself regardless. Most of us don’t even remember the initial driver that spurred us onto further creations, but there is some inner drive to keep doing it. We’re the self-made, self-taught men who spend our time striving to prove that we’re not as dumb as our college transcripts suggest, and we are endlessly pursuing the sometimes-silly things we love with passionate zeal. 

In the craft of writing, over-the-top intellectuals are also handicapped by the Great-American-Novel syndrome. They can’t write anything that is anything less than the most important thing ever written. This is probably why they sit behind a blinking cursor for so many hours. They are profound thinkers who refuse to write anything common (“Don’t be common!”), trite, cliché, hackneyed, or banal. They prefer to dazzle with the unfathomably amazing, the intellectually illuminating, and that which is illustrative of the plight of mankind against the meaning of life. “Just write,” writing experts tell us. “I can’t,” they say. “I can’t think of anything.” They usually sit before those blinking cursors trying to come up with something so brilliant that it’s beyond brilliant. Then, in those writing groups, they criticize those who produce the common, trite, cliché, hackneyed, or banal, until they realize they share more characteristics with editors than they do writers. Those stuck in the middle with you don’t know what we don’t know, and we’re just dumb enough to think we might have something so entertaining we might eventually add a nugget that is enlightening.

“Get in, get pithy, and get out,” are the words we employ.

When we’re stuck in the middle with a quality author we get this sense that we’re joining hands with them as we walk with them on their path of discovery. If they do it right, it won’t be limited to just a facts based adventure. The quality author is still intimately familiar with being dumb on the issue, and we can hear the joy in their voice as they discover all this great knowledge. They know that fuzzy line between intellectual and dumb so well that they know how to tap dance on both sides, and we laugh right along with him. As much as we prefer to think we get it, whatever it is, we actually don’t most of the times, because we’re not as smart as those who do. We do enjoy the pursuit of knowledge, but we don’t enjoy hearing some professorial presentation from someone who knows the facts so well that they are all but reading them on a Teleprompter. Those of us stuck in the middle with you, on that fuzzy line between intelligent and dumb, are not so far removed from our misunderstandings of the world that we don’t take them for granted and no longer question the ways of the world anymore.

Yesterday I Learned …

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Yesterday, I learned that TIL is an abbreviation for “Today I learned …” Today I learned that in the era of texting and Tweeting, we are abbreviating far too often. I knew that yesterday, but it’s annoying me today.

1) Yesterday, I considered myself intelligent. Today, I learned that I’m not half as smart as I thought I was yesterday. We curious types ask questions and questions can lead to questions, such as, “How is it that you did not know that?” They ask this with that strained smile that suggests they have a haymaker awaiting us. Curious types often wipe the slate clean to learn different perspective, new angles, and nuanced approaches to known procedures. There are also times when we just don’t know. Decades of cultural and societal conditioning train us to avoid asking such questions, for we know the abuse that’s coming from those who know and those who quietly pretend to know so they’re not the subject of such abuse.

2) Yesterday, I learned that kids hate cotton candy as much as I do. Today, I learned that no matter how great it looks, cotton candy is pretty awful. Cotton candy, fairy floss, candy floss, tooth floss, or whatever we call it around the world looks so good on a stick, in a bag, or in a  bag on a stick. It looks so beautiful in other mouths, but how many of us, kids or adults, make it past the third bite? After watching others tongue their way through the confection and appear to be having one heck of a good time doing it, my son pleaded with me to purchase some for him. “You’re going to hate it,” I told him. “No, I won’t,” he said. Amid the back and forth that ensued, one that mirrored the many arguments I had with my dad, I conceded. I remembered how alluring the confection was for me. My son took one bite. He wouldn’t admit that he hated it, he wouldn’t give me that satisfaction, but he gave it back to me saying, “I can’t eat it.” I was frustrated with him, but as I said, I remember going through all of that myself.  

3) Yesterday, I learned that the Astros cheated by stealing signs, the Patriots cheated by filming the other teams’ practices, and the New Orleans Saints cheated. Today, I found out that no one has ever accused my favorite teams of cheating. If the other team has such obvious signals that my team can steal them, why aren’t they doing it? If the other team is giving away their game plan in any way, and you’re not taking advantage of any opportunity you can to win, why, the hell, am I still cheering you on?  

4) Yesterday, I learned that some of the times we buy junk for a kid’s birthday gift. Is it our fault that the toy was a piece of junk? Today, I learned that it depends how long it works. The reveal is the most vital moment in the life of the birthday present. If that kid wants to play with it moments after opening it, and it works for that first hour, we’re in the clear.

5) Yesterday, I learned the need to teach our kids to appreciate gifts they receive. “That isn’t what I wanted,” my kid said after opening a Christmas gift. Most of us learned gift etiquette from our mom when we were young. “You pretend to love that gift, no matter what,” my mom told me, as her mom probably told her. Today I learned to phrase this in such a way that the child’s rationale might view it as more honest. “You don’t have to talk about whether you like the gift or not. You just say, ‘Oh, thank you so much’ with a bright, shiny smile on your face, and everyone moves on in life.” Again, the reveal is the most important part of gift-giving. If your child can open a gift with all feelings left in tact, you’re in the clear.

6) Yesterday, I learned that there’s nothing more compelling than a well-placed, succinct disclaimer. If I were the owner of a fireworks company, I would test the limits of that theory by listing disclaimers listed all over my creations. I would warn my potential customers that this might be the most dangerous firework ever created. One part of the reason we think we need disclaimers is to protect the consumer, another is to protect the company from lawsuits, and my disclaimers would attempt to do all of the above, but they would also try to generate hype and excitement to those who seek dangerous fireworks. Today, I learned that this principle applies to music, movies, and anything that might lead a parent to warn a child. The more we warn, the more exciting the subject of our warnings will appear to the warned.  

7) Yesterday, I heard some stranger say, “You’re so anecdotal. Your whole life in anecdotal!” to another. I had no idea what that discussion concerned, but I couldn’t help but wonder how that applied. Did that person just learn the word? Did they enjoy using it, because it has so many syllables that sound so intellectual? Today, I realized that we’re all anecdotal.

8) Yesterday, I learned that some of the times I move out of another person’s way without complaint, regardless if I have the right of way or not. Most people cede space in an open area for another to pass. Some do not. Some walk straight for us, expecting us to cede the space necessary for them to get through, and we can read those signposts as they head our way. When we see them coming, we know it’s better to move out of their way. Some form of compassion often motivates this decision. Today I learned that some of the times it’s just better to get out of the way with no questions asked. Some people don’t care for our questions.

9) Yesterday, I learned that, “One of the key components to having an open mind is admitting that you’re wrong,” says the person with whom we disagree.

“That’s probably true in some personal instances,” I argue today, “but you’ll need to show me the person who was richly rewarded for admitting they were wrong, and I’ll take a look at it.”

The first thing a person who wants to have an open mind will do is listen, read, and gather all of the information they can attain to formulate a philosophy. After selecting a philosophical train of thought that aligns with ours, we should continue to gather as many dissenting opinions as we can to challenge that logic. Some people say that an open mind often contains some conflicting opinions. We all have some conflicting opinions, but the best way to limit it is to listen to, and read, as many conflicting opinions as we can find, as often as we can, so that we can philosophically defeat dissenting opinions in our own mind. If we can’t defeat their rationale, we adjust accordingly. If we can, dissenting opinions often strengthen our own. We should also compare our ability to have an open mind versus the person who requires us to have an open mind so that we might agree with them. Their mind is often as closed to dissenting opinions as those they accuse.

10) Yesterday, I learned that too many say that they are so honest that others can’t take their brand of “brutal honesty”. Today, I learned that too few of us use such brutal honesty on ourselves.

11) Yesterday, I learned that there are two types of people in this world. Those who prepare their order before they reach the drive-thru window and those who put their family of eight in park and turn to them, “Now, what does everybody want?” Today, I realized that there is a third type, the person who is trapped behind that family of eight.

12) Yesterday, I learned that I think we can tell a lot about a person by the way they drive. I sat behind a person who would not turn until they had a “clear” opening. A clear opening is a relative term that we have not codified. It can be the space necessary to avoid entering into, or causing an automobile accident, or a hole in traffic that allows for the passage of the state of South Dakota. Today, I realized that I could never be friends with such a person, in part because the man who raised me would not turn unless he could see Wyoming unobstructed.

13) Yesterday, I learned that the most horrific thing that ever happened to us probably took less than a minute. Impossible, we argue, I was there, and I know it lasted longer than a minute. Did it, or did you relived every single detail of every snapshot of that moment, the smells, and the sounds. Have you put that moment in slow-motion, and relived it so often that it seemed longer. Today, I learned that humans, on average, live 41,942,880 minutes, and some of us spend an inordinate amount of minutes reliving that one. It doesn’t help to hear others say that we should just move on, but there is a point when we begin to obsess over it so much that we ruin too many minutes of our lives. No matter what happens in the moments before our final minute comes, I can’t help but think that we’ll regret wasting so much time obsessing over that other one.

Dumb Guy’s Disease

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“Taken care of me? Mike, you’re my kid brother, and you take care of me? Did you ever think of that. Ever once? Send Fredo off to do this, send Fredo to take care of that… take care of some little unimportant night club here, and there; pick somebody up at the airport. I’m your older brother Mike and I was stepped over! … It ain’t the way I wanted it! I can handle things. I’m smart. Not like everybody says, like dumb. I’m smart and I want respect!” –Fredo from The Godfather II

“What happened?” we ask ourselves. “I thought I was going to be one of the smart ones. I know, I was a disinterested student in school, and I probably cared too much about partying for far too long in the afterlife (the life after high school), but I thought I would’ve gathered enough wisdom by now that someone, somewhere would consider me wise, but I have to face it. I have a mean case of dumb guy’s disease.”

Dumb guy’s disease doesn’t necessarily mean that the carrier is dumb, but that they are not as smart as they thought they would be at this point. We all know dumb guys, those men and women who by social calculations don’t know enough to enter into the league of intelligence. We never considered ourselves one of them, until someone far more intelligent than us gave us a condescending “you don’t know do you?” smile. We would love to dismiss that look with the notion that they had an agenda, but we know we choked in crunch time, because we didn’t know. When enough of these moments happen, we conclude that we’re not half as bright as we thought we would be at this point in our lives.

To prove ourselves to us, we sought less structured forms of education. We thought this might result in us becoming what smart people call autodidact, or a self-taught person. (Yes, I had to look that up.). We might begin reading better websites and better books, we might watch more documentaries, and listen to a wide array of podcasts. No matter what venue we choose, we will focus our renewed thirst for knowledge on defeating the structured concepts we failed to learn in school. This is our way of putting all those poor grades behind us by rejecting traditional, accepted knowledge as a form of intellectual rebellion.

“Everything they taught you in school is wrong,” is click bait for dumb guys who hope to succeed beyond the fools in school who regurgitated accepted facts back to the teacher. We dumb guys learn the truth, but this version of the truth should not be confused with the truth, in most cases, but rather a subjective truth that various authors spend decades writing in various forms and incarnations. This is one of the many attempts dumb guys make to rectify the past.

***

“Too many lyricists attempt to write a song, as if it’s a college thesis,” a musician replied. “I just write lyrics that fit the music.”

That’s pretty much it, right there, I thought. We dumb guys spend the rest of our afterlives (those years after high school) focused on informing the world that we’re not as dumb as everybody thought we were in school or in the immediate aftermath where the focus of their life was partying. The musician’s quote informed me that when I injected politics and music appreciation into my fiction, I was writing my college thesis to impress upon my peers in high school the idea that I was not as dumb as they thought I was. Some big name fiction authors make political overtures to enlighten their readers, and they attempt to woo us into listening to their favorite groups with forays into music appreciation. I used to write about my main character’s appreciation for my favorite group of the moment, in the manner the big name authors do. My modus operandi was if they can do it, why can’t I? My second thought was they could get away with it, because they were big names in the fiction world, and I wasn’t. I knew their music, everyone did, it was ZZ Top, AC/DC, The Ramones, and just about every tired, formulaic classic rock group we hear every day on classic rock radio. The author’s point was to instill in our minds the idea that his character was risqué, because he enjoyed listening to rock and roll. I enjoyed the author’s brand of rock and roll back when I was trying to define myself by listening habits, but I grew tired of the classic rock monochromatic formulas. This author obviously didn’t, and it defined his work for me. In his attempts to appear hip, naughty, and rebellious through his rock choices, I also saw his attempts to appear meaningful, thoughtful, and intelligent for what they were, and I realized that he was writing his college thesis for ushis big name author didn’t introduce his political, or music, preferences as well as I thought he had when I was blinded by his big name.

In the years I spent trying to prove I was not a dumb guy, I never heard the notion that intelligence and brilliance should be considered different strains of intellect. (I realize that in the strictest sense of the terms, some might consider another so intelligent, in a structured manner, that they consider them brilliant, but for the sake of argument let’s say that brilliance and intelligence are parallel roads.) The two strains of intellect could be broken down to left-brain versus right brain, as in one type of brain has a natural aptitude for math and science, while the other is more of a creative type. One could also say that an intelligent person knows the machinations of a saxophone so well that they can fix it and tune it while the other knows how to play it brilliantly, and while both can learn how to accomplish the other’s feat, neither will ever do it as well as the other, for their brains work in decidedly different ways.

This idea applies to dumb guy’s disease, because some creative types do not discover their aptitude for creativity, until the afterlife, the life after school. We recognize some forms of artistic expression, such as an ability to draw or play an instrument, early on, while an aptitude for creative writing often occurs later in life. The math and science types discover an aptitude for the structured learning, memorization, and problem solving in school, and it puts them in the upper echelon of learners, whereas the young, creative types live outside the bubble, looking in with jealousy. Screaming, as Fredo did in The Godfather II, “I’m smart. Not like everybody says, like dumb. I’m smart and I want respect!”

***

“You’re not already there,” would be the first piece of advice I would give a younger me if I could go back in time and give my younger self some advice. “You’re not special,” I would add, “and you don’t know how to play basketball already.” These are the pathogens of dumb guy’s disease, and the bacteria reproduces and multiplies rapidly infecting every matter it comes across.

I would also advise myself to find a way to learn the structure of the system and succeed within it, but I was never adept at structured learning–I’m still not–so, that would be pointless. What I would say instead is learn more about yourself, who you are and how you can succeed with your gifts and talents while keeping an eye on your limitations. 

I would also ask myself to work harder to acknowledge that there’s nothing special about me. I wouldn’t tell myself to stop watching Tom Cruise movies, but I would suggest that I stop watching them, thinking that the theme of those movies applies to me. “You’re not the chosen one, or the one that shouldn’t have to accept mediocrity. Accept mediocrity. Learn it, love it, and live it, until you can surpass it.”

I wasn’t a better athlete, student or employees because I thought I already was, and the frustration I felt when faced with the fact that I wasn’t, was tied to that idea that I thought I was already there, or should’ve been. When I failed in athletics, it was such a mystery to me that I threw temper tantrums, because I was frustrated that I wasn’t as great as I thought I was. It was also a message I sent to my teammates that that wasn’t me. That was but a snapshot of my abilities, and I was so much better than that. The problem for dumb guys is that oftentimes the message is enough. We don’t feel the need to get better, because “We already know how to play basketball.”

We get in front of ourselves at times. We never learn how to slow our roll long enough to work within the confines of who we were to succeed within the constraints of who we are. 

If I could advise myself thirty years prior, I would say slow down, realize who you are when you’re doing it. Analyze your shot in basketball and try to figure out how to make the shot more often, and when some tries to give you some advice, don’t shoot them down by saying, “I already know how to play basketball.” 

“You’re not the all star athlete you think you are,” I would add. “You’re not a great employee, and you’re not near as smart as you think you are. You’re actually pretty dumb, because you refuse to listen to people, like that obnoxious 50-year-old waiter who nodded at everything you said, because he said he used to say those same things.”

“He was a waiter, a 50-year-old waiter, so what the hell does he know about life?” my younger self would argue. “He was an oafish, avuncular type, who was always kind of a fool.”

“Until he got you alone, away from all your friends, and he turned all serious on us, saying, “You’re doing it wrong, and the only reason I know is because I was doing it wrong at your age, the same way as you. I was a dumb kid, just like you, but I knew better. I knew how to play football already, and I was good enough at Math to pass the stupid class that I probably would never use anyway. I didn’t get good grades, and I thought it was kind of funny, and I fell asleep in study hall too. I did just good enough in school to keep everyone off my back, so I could go out, enjoy my youth and have some fun in life, and here I am a 50-year-old waiter. If I could somehow switch places with you, right here, right now, I’d do my life differently.”

Now that the roles are flipped, what would we do differently? I’d drop the whole Tom Cruise “I could be the chosen one” mindset, because Michael Jordan wasn’t the chosen one, until he sculpted himself into it. I’d drop the whole “I already know how to play basketball” mindset and listen to those teaching me the “finger tips, rotation, follow through” tedious mechanics of the game. I know those mechanics now, now that it’s too late. I was never an adept student with all that structured learning, and I’m still not, but if I would’ve had more patience with myself and learned more about myself earlier, I might’ve been able to chip away at the granite stones I placed in my path to create something, as opposed to inviting that ‘I’m already there’ pathogen that caused my dumb guy’s disease.