The Love of Being Intelligent
When I ask my friends and colleagues about the things that they most value in life, most of them say that their life’s most important gifts are generally the gifts of intelligence.
We tend to think of intelligence as a funny thing to be appreciated or as something that’s extremely difficult to acquire. People who know their minds from their shoulders, people who understand that there’s such a thing as thinking, those are the people who truly have it, and they know the value of intelligence and the love of intelligence.
When I ask my friends and colleagues about the things that they most value in life, most of them say that their life’s most important gifts are generally the gifts of intelligence. It doesn’t matter what the person is talking about, everyone has at least one that they like, appreciate, or have been lucky enough to meet.
We tend to think of intelligence as a funny thing to be appreciated or as something that’s extremely difficult to acquire. In fact, intelligence is so much more than a physical trait or a talent. Intelligence is a trait that we all possess and sometimes it’s a trait that we don’t even know we have. It’s our mind that’s at the core of what makes us human.
Intelligence is not something that comes out of thin air. People who know their minds from their shoulders, people who understand that there’s such a thing as thinking, those are the people who truly have it, and they know the value of intelligence and the love of intelligence.
To see someone with such intellectual abilities at such a young age is a sight that can’t be understood at first glance, but to us who have the ability to understand, it is a source of pride to see such a future possibility. It’s also a source of despair when someone realizes that they are not in the right place at the right time to achieve it.
Often it seems like the smartest people in the world are the ones who are not always recognized for their brilliance. They’ve had to overcome challenges they would have never faced if they had been born with the gift of intelligence. Of course, there are millions of intelligent people out there in the world, but many of them wouldn’t be where they are today if they didn’t face the challenges that they did.
The Love of Being Intelligent also applies to the love of people and not just the love of personality, like when we think of the kind of person we want to be. There is no easy way to say this: You can only appreciate the people you are around if you understand what makes them different from the rest of the world. And if you only appreciate them for the qualities you have in common, you are destined to be jealous of them instead of in awe of them.
When people make a big deal about the love of being intelligent, it’s usually because they haven’t done anything to earn the praise. Often, these are the types of people who have been blessed with two parents who had the advantage of being good teachers, who, perhaps, never really needed to learn how to perform certain tasks, yet were still given the chance to do so. These individuals have enjoyed the benefits of working hard to develop some of the best skills possible.
The world of human achievement isn’t a gift that’s been bestowed upon a whole lot of people who aren’t smart enough to use it to their advantage. They’ve worked very hard at it and spent the time necessary to make sure that the skills they learned in school, in a church youth group, or from a mentor made a difference in their lives.
The natural tendency is to feel a little intimidated by the pursuit of intelligence. We take a little measure of pride in the way we think, we take pride in the way we live, and we believe that other people should respect us. There’s a little, but it’s often a distorted perception of what intelligence is and what it means to be intelligent.
You can have the kind of love of intelligence that I speak of without being perceived as stupid or beneath others. The power of being able to think and interact with other people can be used in a positive manner, and the true value of intelligence is still more than appreciated.
We tend to focus on the things that define us as people and forget that there are so many other aspects of us that are also intelligence. I’d encourage you to examine your own character and ask yourself the following questions: Who is the best at what I do?
What kind of person am I? Who are my friends? Who is my family? What is my value in life?
