There was a cartoon I saw a long time ago that really struck me. It had a bunch of animals wandering around in two different pastures. The animals had different labels on them. One pasture had labels like “fears death”, “turned off by one bad experience”, and “hoards”. The other pasture (which was elevated higher than the first by a steep, rugged cliff) had labels like “embraces life”, “flexible and open-minded”, and “lives simply”. You can see what they are getting at. The two labels that struck me the most were these two: “know-it-all” and “knows nothing”.
You know those moments when you have this sudden realization of wanting to change your life around? As soon as I saw this comic, I desperately told myself I needed to be in the “knows nothing” category. I would say I am half way there. It is easy: I am a very curious individual by nature. Therefore, I will always remain a learner. More answers only lead to more questions. The hardest part for me about this “knowing nothing” mentality is conveying it to other people. I personally understand that my knowledge of this vast world is puny, yet I feel that it is extremely difficult for other people to know this about me. In other words, I get the feeling that people can perceive me as a know-it-all even though I don’t feel that way.
It has always been a precarious balance for me. I used to be a lot more arrogant and try to subtly show off how smart I was. I remember one time at church school, I raised my hand and answered a question with the fancy word “benevolence”. When the teacher asked me to repeat myself, I sighed and changed my answer to “charity”. I remember that my sister was sitting right next to me. She probably thought I was a wise ass. She was probably right.
This attitude was conditioned into me over time. In elementary school we all had to find our niche. I played soccer on the playground in 3rd and 4th grade, but I started to defect from the jock crowd because I thought they were douchebags. Plus, I was super skinny and not very athletic. I was also not very sociable, so the popular crowd didn’t fit my bill. The final nail in the coffin came when I got glasses in 5th grade. I can recall the distinct moment when I learned I would need glasses. I had just wandered out to recess after failing my vision test. I was leaning up against the brick wall of the school with another kid who had just failed his vision test (Matthew Kang, wherever you are now!). I turned to him and said, “Man, this sucks”. I was referring to the fact that I was going to be stigmatized as a nerd for the rest of my life. What I didn’t realize was that I was already on this trajectory anyways. It didn’t occur to me that an elementary schooler obsessing over strange things such as fans, tornadoes, guns, and video games would be perceived as nerdy, glasses or not.
Regardless, it still stung when people first saw me with glasses. I remember one awful incident. I can still see it perfectly in my head. I had just gotten my new glasses and was eating with my mom at McDonalds. I look out the window and here comes this girl I had a major crush on (Jessica Bauer, wherever you are now!). Her eyes caught mine. The initial reaction on her face was that of recognition, which quickly morphed into surprise. What immediately followed was her biting her lip from laughter as she walked all the way up to the door. While this incident didn’t entirely mortify me (she wasn’t my crush after that, needless to say), little things began to build up over time. Things like a jock bullying incident in the 6th grade made the decision to become a nerd more and more conscious on my part. Intelligence was empowering to me since my social and kinesthetic skills failed me. So I couldn’t throw a football and I didn’t treat people like they were dirt? I didn’t care; I was at least smarter than the kids who did do that.
Obviously I am a lot different now. I hate being an arrogant know-it-all. Still, the habits persist. I worry that some people think I’m beating them over the head with knowledge. This is not my intention. Honestly, it’s just me getting jacked up about certain topics. I have a child-like enthusiasm. My excitement over my curiosity can go over the edge sometimes, which might make me seem pretentious. I am still learning ways to combat this.
I’m going to take a sec and talk about Danielle. I always say that she is my “missing puzzle piece”. I feel that our lives snap together perfectly. It is not that we are dependent on each other for happiness; we were both intrinsically happy people before we met. It is the fact we are compatible in enough ways to get along, but different in enough ways to constantly learn from each other. One thing I am constantly learning from her is how she tries to slip into the background. She does not like to be the center of attention (she is probably going to kill me for even talking about her right now). She is most likely smarter than you are, but she will desperately try to hide it. She is really talented at a number of things, but she will never show you. She has this magical ability to engage you in a debate and make you reconsider everything you were thinking, but politely. She never brandishes her vast knowledge in your face even once. I don’t know how she does it. In other words, she has (or tries to have) as little ego as possible. I have learned a lot from her over the years. But, I still have a ways to go.
I feel it is very difficult to resolve ego and humility. This is especially hard when you have to “put yourself out there” when you are an artist or a performer. You don’t want to come across as an arrogant know-it-all, but at the same time you have to be decisive about your abilities and talents. I’ve heard many differing (and interesting) opinions on this. I once heard Chris Martin talk (the principal trumpet player in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, not the member of Cold Play) about how he constantly seeks to balance confidence with humbleness. John T. Madden and Rodney Whitaker (MSU profs. if you don’t know) are a little bit quicker to embrace the idea of the ego. I saw a video of them discussing the necessity of an artist to have some sort of ego. Where else are you going to gain the confidence to go out on stage and perform? Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (the guitarist for The Mars Volta) takes ego to its furthest extreme. An interviewer once asked him to respond to the comments that his music is pretentious and self-absorbed. I can’t find the exact quote, but his answer was that he actually embraces these terms. An artist, he argued, is supposed to be self-absorbed because that is how they produce their craft: by looking within. So he loves being pretentious. Go figure.
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