I'm very proud of my generation for many reasons. I love how informed we are, how accepting we are, and I believe that our vast knowledge of things, gained from the age of technology, will breed us into great leaders when we have the chance.
We also have oh so many flaws, and the main one is that we are not as smart as we think we are. And we try again and again to prove our intelligence to anyone who's within earshot. We don't talk about our accomplishments, however, we talk about the intangibles of our intelligence.
We all have a friend who is out of a job and out of school who has a "genius level" IQ. We have a friend who did great in high school but is now struggling. We have the friend who killed the SAT/ACT but couldn't get accepted into a high level college.
Who's the most intelligent?
I say that the answer is none of the above. We, as individuals, like to assign our intelligence, to our greatest strength, whether it's IQ, test scores, or grades. We show these things off, but ignore our failures and the skills that we lack.
None of this is intelligence, though. Without any accomplishments, there is no evidence for our intelligence.
Someone who opens his or her bakery and lives happily without completing high school is far and away smarter than the person who graduated college and can't keep a job for two months.
This may be a difficult pill to swallow for many. You may be a deep thinker, and you may truly understand how intelligent you are, but what's the use of intelligence if nothing has been done with it? That's simply the way things are in the real world: If you want to put so much stock in someone's "intelligence," it needs to start meaning something else, because as it is, a person's "intelligence" is not very useful.
Your IQ, your test scores, your diploma, none of that is intelligence. That's your potential.
Intelligence is earned. We need to start earning.
When you truly are intelligent, you won't feel the need to tell anyone. Your happiness, your success, and your personality will do the talking for you, so stop telling people how smart you are. Start focusing on where you need to improve.
The proof of all of this is I know for a fact there are people my age who might not have a higher IQ than me, but are much more successful, and much more accomplished than I am. I may think I'm smarter than them, but my opinion means very little when standing next to someone who's intelligence I can see, rather than hear.
What have you earned? What can people see in you without you even telling them?
Is the answer "not much"? If so, there is no shame in that. Everybody has to start somewhere. Especially the geniuses.
