I Am Stupid

From an early age, the only thing I remember being praised for was my academic performance and for ‘being smart’. I don’t recall being praised by anyone for being kind, generous, caring, compassionate, hardworking, humble, or any other positive character traits. The result was that ‘being smart’ became such an integral part of my identity and self-esteem that I couldn’t bear feeling that I was not, and that became the only character trait that I cared to develop. However, like many/most others in similar situations, I did not perform exceptionally well in school because I thought that if I was really smart then I should be able to excel without putting in any work. After all, I was never praised for my work-ethic.

I remember often feeling defensive, as if someone else being ‘smarter’ than me was a challenge to my self-worth, and in some way I think this made me develop a distaste for school and academic pursuits because people who were hardworking, not necessarily ‘smart’ by my measure at the time, seemed to be the ones with the highest achievements. At that time I wanted to just give up because my only source of self-esteem eventually proved to be a facade, and I had not developed myself in any other way that would help me to mitigate these bad feelings.

By the time I reached my mid-20s and went back to university, I developed enough of a work ethic to actually attend classes and do my assignments, and rounded out a bit more, but to this day I’m still plagued in some way by what I would call arrogance or pretension. I find myself making black-and-white judgments of others based on whether I would find it productive in some way to communicate with them or whether I think their lifestyle would have a positive or negative influence on me. The irony is that having most of those people in my life now would probably have been a net-positive in that they would help me out of this fixed mindset I seem to have developed.

The more time I spend alone, the more I marinate myself in my own thoughts and feelings and become more like I already am. During those times I also read and analyze my life too much. So it has become somewhat of an endless cycle of limiting my exposure to people based on trying to keep ‘bad influences’ away from me or trying to use my time productively, while then reinforcing my unproductive thought processes by spending too much time alone and not being exposed to other viewpoints or ways of thinking, besides through books. But since the books are ones that I chose, I am still somehow insulating myself from new ideas outside of my scope of interest.

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So, he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions.

Alan Watts

Most of the difficulties in my life come from myself. Sometimes I feel a bit lonely and want to be around others, but then when I’m around others I find some reason to be annoyed and then want to be alone. Thinking a lot has proven itself to be mostly unproductive and encourages excessive criticality in all aspects of life, resulting in satisfaction being near-impossible to attain.

All my efforts to maintain my self-esteem on the basis of ‘being smart’ (like obsessively studying and learning new things, debating, etc.) have had the unintended consequence of convincing me that it is beneficial to choose isolation over socialization, even though I’m well aware that I am a very social person who enjoys being around people and being part of a group. So basically I let my thoughts derail me from my natural disposition, resulting in many more hardships in my life than necessary. My obsession with learning and ‘self-development’ has resulted in an overall degradation of my quality of life, which seems more like the opposite of self-development. Putting in a lot of work for an overall negative effect is a huge waste of time, leading me to conclude that I am, in fact, stupid.