I want to write a few posts about a topic that is personal and hard for me to talk about. It is an area that I often feel misunderstood. As such, I have little confidence that I am even going to make sense with what I write. I don’t even know where I’m going to go with it, or how I’m going to end up. I’m not sure if the post itself will connect to the title. The title is what is on my heart. Getting there may be long and confusing. I need to talk about this. I need to try to communicate it. Please bear with me if I don’t make sense. Or to put it in the words of an alternate post title I thought of, “I’m Smart, Please Like Me Anyway.”
Let me start off this post with a disclaimer and some background presuppositions. I’m going to be talking about a word I don’t really care for: Smart. I dislike this term, because: [update: It’s still me talking in the list–I can’t figure out how to indent in this template without WordPress automatically inserting the big quote mark]
1.It can mean way too many things. If you call me smart, what do you really mean? With this particular label, I find that what one person means when they use the word can be very different from what another person thinks when they hear it.
2.It can mean too few things. I operate mostly out of a paradigm of “multiple intelligences”. When people call me smart, it frustrates me, in part, because I feel like they’ve artificially elevated one type of intelligence. Usually, I think people are talking about something to do with academics. They seem to be saying, You know things I don’t know. You remember things way better than I do. You think about things in ways I can’t even think to think about. You use big words. Those things relate to only one type of smart. But, when you call me smart, sometimes it feels like by your acknowledging whatever it is that you see as smart in that moment, you are from that point on, expecting me to be forever smart in every way. Which leads to my next point:
3.It is loaded with assumptions. I hate being called smart, not because I can’t receive a compliment (which is what many people assume when I don’t know how to respond to being told I’m smart), but because I’ve been burned too many times by the paradox of people who go on and on about how smart I am, until I do something that seems stupid to them, and then they ask, “What WERE you thinking?” Or, worse yet statements like, “Just Think about it.” If you call me smart, it feels like there are assumptions and expectations about how I should always behave and think, and a lot less tolerance for me to do or be “not smart” (whatever that is) at times. Some of the time, “not smart” really IS that I’m not too smart in a certain area. Some of the time, when you look at me or respond to me like I’m stupid, it seems like it is precisely because I don’t think exactly like you do that I now appear to be stupid or “not thinking”. Other times, it is hard because I’m not believed when I truly don’t understand something or can’t do something or can’t figure something out… “But you’re so smart.”
4.It is an isolating term. Often when I hear someone call me smart, I feel like a wide gulf has just been artificially laid down between me and them. You’re smart. You’re different. I admire how smart you are, but it’s obvious we can’t really relate, because you are so far “up there” with your thoughts and ideas.
5.It is a “big” adjective. When people see smart, sometimes it seems like they can’t see beneath, behind or below that. I don’t want you to see me as smart, if, in doing so, you can’t see the whole picture of me, of which my academic brain capabilities are only a part.
6.It is an adjective that carries a lot of weight. It seems to trump other adjectives. It is often used in a ranking way. For example, when someone is telling me I am smart, it often feels like they are putting me on a pedestal, and themselves lower, in comparison. (which ties into #4)
At the same time, I can’t seem to cut the word out of my life. As an adjective, it is helpful. I have friends who I like for a variety of reasons. Or perhaps, it’s more accurate to say, I have many friends who I like. Each of them has many fascinating, interesting and likable traits. Some of those friends have as one of their characteristic what I would describe as “smart”. I don’t want to have to deny or ignore that their being smart is part of the them that I like.It’s not so much that I like them because they are smart, but that I like them, and when I think of them, “smart” is one of the adjectives I would use to describe them.
This friend wears glasses. That friend is tall. One friend is an incredible seamstress. Another is extremely shy. And still another is, yes, smart. I’m not exactly complimenting my tall friend, nor am I putting down my shy friend when I use those adjectives. They just are those things. They aren’t only those things (And that is a very key point to my thinking). Each adjective paints just a tiny part of a description that is never adequate to describe a particular friend.
Such adjectives are descriptive and not prescriptive. If you are my friend, you could, in talking about me to another person, honestly say, “She is tall.” You could not accurately say, “She is tall and so she plays basketball very well.” If I played basketball (I don’t–I am tall and very clumsy), and was good at it, it would be true. But as soon as the adjective “tall” becomes categorically loaded with assumptions and expectations which may or may not be true about me, it is no longer a helpful description, but becomes most unhelpful.
I suppose part of what I’m trying to work my way through to is that, although adjectives carry meaning that are loaded with implication, adjectives which describe people aren’t really rankable. Meaning I don’t like one friend better because they are smarter than the rest. And I don’t like another friend better than the rest of my friends because she is stunningly beautiful and draws attention wherever we go (I don’t have any stunningly beautiful friends, according to the world’s description of “stunning beauty,” but I imagine if I did that that friend could find the adjective “beautiful” as frustrating as I find “smart”.) By describing a friend with a specific adjective, I am saying nothing about their likability. I’m only describing the person who I happen to like very much.
Still, I want to be able to admire a trait in a friend, without it seeming like I’m ranking them. I want to be able to admire smart when I see it in a friend, and not have them feel awkward or elevated up. I have a daughter who paints beautiful pictures. When I admire her paintings, I am not saying, “I’m a terrible painter.” I really AM a terrible painter. I’m even a terrible drawer. Shoot, I can’t even color very well. But, I’m not thinking of those things, when I admire her paintings and say, “You are an amazing painter.” All I’m doing is admiring a trait and gift that SHE has. My admiration and description of what I see in her says nothing about me.
In the same way, I want to be able to admire a friend who has just said something amazing or thought about things from an incredibly profound perspective and say, “Wow, you are so smart” and have them hear the admiration and be glad because of it, but (1) know that their being smart isn’t a demand or constant expectation on which our friendship hinges and (2)it’s not the only thing I like about them, and if they got a disease that diminished their brain capacities tomorrow, I’d still like them. They are smart, but they are not only smart.
So, you can see the bind I’m in. I don’t like people using the word “smart” to describe me for the reasons above, but I find it, at times, a useful word, much like words such as artistic, creative, intense, laid back or funny. I suppose in the previous two paragraphs, I’m trying to put into words assumptions I long for you to have, if you are going to call me “smart”.
Would a high IQ be the same thing as “smart” in the way you are wanting to use it?
I’m not real good when it comes to conversations like this but I’m trying to hear what you’re saying
Thanks, DM, for trying to hear what I’m saying. That means a lot, especially because I’m not sure myself! Writing this out, I hope, will help me figure it out more.
I suppose high IQ might be part of it. I don’t know. I don’t like to think about it in those terms. My IQ is “up there”, but not off the charts or anything. I don’t trust tests, though, because I’m a good test taker, and I know people who are way smarter than me, but score lower on tests for a variety of reasons.
But, when people call me “smart” I think it does have something to do with this. They assume I have a high IQ because of how I think. I don’t always understand why. And I also don’t know why other people look down on me for not being logical or reasonable enough. I feel caught between worlds–too smart and not smart enough. And I don’t even want to have how smart I am be in the differential of relationship and communication. But, it is apparently unavoidable.
Did that help or add to the confusion?
People assume I’m “smart” because I have completed 4 years of college and 3 years of college. Sure, I’m book smart in that particular area. But I don’t read non-fiction. I do not “wax philosophical.” And my sister apparantly took all the common sense in the family, because I ain’t got none. I fall down alot – am quite clumsy. And have lost all ability to spell without spell check or start a sentence properly (other than with the word “and” or “but”).
When people call me “smart” all those other things go through my head. It’s the “yeah, but….” tendency.
Someone once told me “for someone so smart, you sure do act stupidly some times.” And that, sums it all up, I think.
Enola, I’m with you….Have you seen the Far Side cartoon about the Midvale School of the Gifted? Where the guy is pushing on the door that says “Pull”? That would be me….After I’d tripped on the stairs and dropped some of my books 🙂
I guess I wouldn’t mind being called “smart” if it didn’t come with so many expectations about what that meant and the assumption “smart in one area; smart in everything.” If you think that about me, you don’t really know me. If you like me, but don’t really understand the whole “stupid/smart” thing about me, maybe I live in fear that the illusion of me that you like, you’ll stop liking once you get to know me better, or once I start talking in ways that don’t make sense to you.
Perhaps, as Scott is making me think, I need to give people more grace than that. They may, indeed, think I’m more comprehensively smart than I actually am in reality. But that doesn’t mean they’ll switch from liking me to disliking me when they are surprised by the “not so smart” side of me or the part of me that doesn’t make sense to them.
If I met you and thought you were “smart” I’d pick your brain about that subject. I love learning from others. And I’m “smart enough” (ha ha) to know that there aren’t too many people smart in all areas. Then if I saw you do the push/pull thing with the door, I’d laugh uproariously and know that we would be best of friends…….right after my nose stopped smarting from running smack INTO the door, that is.
Enola,
I love learning from others, too.
I’m only just now learning to laugh at myself, WITH other people. It helps me when the other people who are laughing at me, admit their own human foibles and how my foibles connect us, instead of separate us (as mocking laughter does.)
I was thinking about the saying “misery loves company” and thought my version should be “clumsy likes company” 🙂
When I was pregnant the first time, my doctor said that clumsiness was a result of the hormones. I knew I had been clumsy before those hormones, but I thought it was a great excuse for that nine months 🙂
Sigh. All I feel I can say in response to this post is that I love you and the way you think. I say that with no expectations; I simply say it as a fact. I hope you feel what I mean, because it’s genuine.
I guess what I can also say is that I really resonated with all that you were saying. I love it when we can get to a place where we appreciate each person for what they uniquely bring to the world — simply their person, which no one else can match — but also such a variety of gifts and qualities and attributes and ways of being that make up the whole of what makes them, them.
I also really appreciate what you said about smartness compliments coming loaded with expectations. This frustrates me because I’ve spent a large portion of the last 10 years of my life learning the beauty of simply being human (and conversely, unlearning the tendency to try to be super-human). I don’t want to be holed into a box that always expects me to perform a certain way. I want to be able to trip and fall (metaphorically and literally — I’m clumsy, too!) without my value being diminished in other people’s eyes. I want to be able to just BE.
This is part of what I hear you getting after. Is that right?
Christianne, I do hear you and receive it as very genuinely spoken.
Isn’t it nice that we can blog about our clumsiness without actually BEING clumsy and breaking something or tripping over a rock that isn’t there, in the process? 🙂
More seriously, your 2nd paragraph hits at where I think I’m going with my thoughts and why I’m pondering this whole topic so intensely right now.
I hear ya sister. What irritates me even more is when people say to me, “You know what you’re problem is…you’re too smart.”
I’m always ask them…too smart for what? To buy into your bulls**t? Too smart because I’m smarter than your dumba**? Would you say that to a male?
Of course, they try and pretend like it’s a compliment, but I don’t know how it can be construed that way.