There are up and downsides to everything and everyone, and the longer I live, the more I suspect the adage that “the grass is always greener” is almost always true.
People want to be rich, but rich people have their own troubles. Likewise, intelligent people have their own crosses to bear.
Here are 15 things people think are sad truths about being smart.
15. We don’t listen to them.
i’m family friends with an epidemiologist, they have been warning that we’re due for a pandemic and we’re not prepared for years.
He was humored at best until last year. He was also one of maybe 5 people in the world that predicted NYC’s cases would drop rapidly during the week where 1/10 people in the city had it. Smart people get ignored until the moment when their right, but IT’S ABOUT BEING PREPARED BEFOREHAND.
14. Knowledge isn’t always power.
The ability to understand most possible outcomes and the consequences often leads to hesitation or inaction. As opposed to some who damn the consequences and just go for it.
It’s called the perfectionists’ trap. If anyone is struggling with this look online there are some very simple exercises you can do to get your mind out of this. Otherwise talk to a therapist.
13. It can be hard to find purpose.
Most smart people never find meaningful application for their intelligence.
12. Ignorance can be bliss.
Best advice I’ve ever received: “keep it simple stupid.”
Sometimes ignorance truly is bliss.
11. Stay in the box.
I was literally told this in my last performance review:
“We know you’re really smart, but you have to sell it better.”
I had just pulled like a week of 12 hour work days and i was told to send out more mails. I hate my existence
10. It’s all relative.
As a person that was repeatedly told how smart I was growing up…1) without social skills it doesn’t mean crap.
2) it easily turns into how you identify yourself and can wreck your mental health (if I’m not smart about everything what good am I??)
3) smart is relative
9. They can struggle in social situations.
I was a career nanny for 10 years, I worked for two families where the parents were doctors. One set especially, Two extremely successful doctors, one anesthesiologist and and a cancer research doctor. I saw their lives from the most intimate view due to working 50+ hours in their home with their children..
the saddest thing is that a lot of them are so, so smart that they stand out as the oddball in all non-academic situations. This is abundantly clear when watching them try to make connections with other, more of average IQ parents
They’re almost just… too brainy and awkward? I have to assume this is a life long struggle.
It just seems isolating at times, I guess is my point here.
8. Expectations are heavy.
I am 31 and peaked in my school years.
It’s depressing and I am embarrassed around family because I think they all imagined me to be the most successful of all the siblings/cousins I grew up with, and instead I’m pretty sure I’m the biggest failure.
I was a teacher’s pet, overachiever, had straight A’s, friends would “hate” me because I rarely had to study outside of the five minutes before class and would still get among the highest grades. Teachers, adult family members, all of them would single me out (in a good way) for being smart. I was constantly praised for sh%t that required little effort/strain, and it made succeeding feel like a given.
Many of them finished college. I literally dropped out in year one. All of them are employed, and several with pretty nice careers. I have been unemployed for a long time and live with my parents atm. Being smart was my “thing” and felt like it was ripped out from under me overnight.
For the last ten years it’s been a battle with depression and the voice in my head constantly calling me stupid. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel like a massive failure, and have a hard time feeling like my younger self was actually me.
Sorry for the personal rant but that’s all to say making it your identity can definitely wreck your mental health and self worth as soon as you start failing and having difficulties as an adult. I do not consider myself smart anymore (haven’t for a long time) because despite having some book smarts I have never adapted to the actual world, and I believe adapting is a necessary component.
Praise kids for working hard and trying hard, not only for the things they are naturally good at.
7. Self-care is important.
That’s kind of the thing they’re talking about. They’re so engulfed in their work that 90% of anything they’ve done in the past month is related to their work.
Many folks like that, especially doctors, need to take care of themselves and take some time to developed more well-rounded. +60hr is incredibly draining beyond just physically.
6. School isn’t real life.
Couldn’t agree more. Being put on an academic pedestal and being intelligent enough to pull off straight A’s without studying set me up for a rude awakening for real life.
5. Everything has a cost.
There’s a cost that comes with spending a lifetime developing one’s intellect, as one sees with doctors (particularly specialists), and the like: less time is devoted to developing the social side of their personalities. That makes those interpersonal connections difficult and awkward.
One of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met was an orthopaedic surgeon, but the man was a social hand grenade. There’s a certain professional bluntness that comes with being a doctor, but in more nuanced social settings that bluntness can come across as dickishness.
To make matters worse, the guy had no idea what made him so off-putting…Smartest fucking guy in the room but he couldn’t understand what the problem was…or maybe he could, he just couldn’t solve it. You can’t make up for YEARS of neglected social graces.
4. Hemingway would know.
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”-forgot where this is from
3. Mental health issues abound.
The fact that growing up smart, or being told you’re better or above average, leads to a burnout, anxiety, and depression.
2. They know enough to be depressed.
Smart people can often see the bad stuff coming and can also see that it really isn’t preventable unless people can be convinced to change their behavior and people can rarely be convinced to change their behavior.
It’s depressing watching negative events unfold that you predicted. More often than not, being proved right is really depressing.
1. They don’t like being separated.
The worst is being smarter than the smart people.
I have no idea why my school did this, but they separated the “gifted and talented” (hate that label it’s such bullshit) kids into four tiers and told everyone which tier every kid was in. And guess what? If you were in the top tier, every other one of the “gifted and talented” kids hated your fucking guts.
It was horrendous. I fit in nowhere, because I was a “gifted from elementary” kid who’d always been separated from everyone else, and then now I was singled out from all the other “gifted” kids with a massive target on my back. Because the one thing smart kids hate is being told there’s someone smarter than them.
I finally just went and hung out with the stoner/dropout kids, stopped taking anything except “normal” classes, and learned how to pretend to be stupider than I was for the sake of my own sanity. Turns out, that last skill has come in remarkably handy for the rest of my f*cking life.
I’m not sure there’s a better way to be, honestly. So just be yourself!
If you’re smart, do you agree with these? Add your own thoughts in the comments.
