Okay, some folks might crook their eyes at this, and bring up examples like Einstein or Mozart. Well let me tell you, those guys weren't just geniuses, they were enlightened souls. When I talk of genius, I mean people who just happen to be smarter than your average above average person (smarter than me, say).
I mean, I realize that there's a wealth of knowledge that's ripe for the picking for everybody, and I also know of the orgasmic feel that comes with learning something knew or ground-breaking, so I'm not putting these intelligent folks down, because they're important too. What I'm saying is that sometimes, you just can't help but think that mebbe these folks focus too much on knowledge.
What brought this about?
I was reading the blog of a friend I recently met, and I realized that all of her entries were strikingly long, and strikingly honest - and abominously boring. Don't get me wrong - you read through her blog posts and you'll know just how brilliant she is, but what can you do when a rant about life starts to involve religion and deep-end philosophy into the mix, resulting into a 1000-word contradictory essay? She's smart, and you'd enjoy talking to her in person, but read any of her personal works, and you'd die of boredom.
Makes me wonder about my own style of blogging (writing is different from blogging). A few of my friends have labeled me as a good but boring writer, not so different from the person I just finished describing now, and while it bothered me for a time, I guess I've outgrown some of the insecurities that comes with being a dude struggling to find his place in a world that's slowly becoming more and more convoluted. And plenty of things have happened between then and now, and I guess they've either grown accustomed to my style of writing, or I've become more entertaining, somewhat.
But assuming that it was the former, then I'm glad I went through all the normal shits your average man on the street had to go through. If everything went according to plan - if I managed to shift from LSGH to IS Manila in grade 6, or if I had stayed with the honors section and skipped seventh grade, or if I'd actually stayed and excelled in college - I'd probably be even more pompous and unbearable than I already was now. Sure, there're merits to excelling and giving your studies your all, but that would have entailed a whole host of sacrifices that would remove a lot from what I was today - and I don't think I'd have been any happier, anyway. Fact is, I'd probably be worse off if I had actually gone and studied.
Sure, a lot of you readers might think that this is just me railing against the educational institutions, but I doubt it. I think life's a much more exciting thing if you handled it head-on, rather than if you looked at it from behind the pages of a book, or the screen of a television. This is why I think that book geniuses, while awesome, must have it tough, since their lives depend on the theoretical and the intellectual.
Me, I'd rather be out there, drinking beer with my buddies.