perceptions
In my youth I think in a way, in a fashion, I tried to appear more smart and more mature than I was.
In fact, I did try to appear more smart, more mature than I was. This was my last defense as a nonathletic, underachieving socially maladroit youth.
I was not exactly a suck up to the adult authority figures. I butted heads with teachers, I stole, I engaged in breaking and entering, I committed wire fraud. I was not a model suck up, I was not one who made an extra effort to appease the adult power structure.
But I felt more comfortable in my encounters with those adult authority figures who acted within the semi-rigid formalities of polite adult society than I ever had with my peers when I was in high school.
To wit, my peers were rude, and cruel, and lacked any moral framework at their age to know better than to brutally attack their peers. I was very sensitive to those attacks, and so I found that engaging adults was far less risky than engaging my peers. I cannot point fingers, because I too engaged in behaviors that I now find reprehensible; those sins are the subject of another post.
As smart and as determined I may be, I feel I have failed in a significant way by way of my inaction to sway the opinions of my friends, my peers, and the general public away from what to me is our government's obvious affront to the American way of life.
I have made a living on being smart for the sake of being smart, but I have not made any impact. I am smart for the sake of my own personal, short termed well being.
I am not so smart.
In fact, I did try to appear more smart, more mature than I was. This was my last defense as a nonathletic, underachieving socially maladroit youth.
I was not exactly a suck up to the adult authority figures. I butted heads with teachers, I stole, I engaged in breaking and entering, I committed wire fraud. I was not a model suck up, I was not one who made an extra effort to appease the adult power structure.
But I felt more comfortable in my encounters with those adult authority figures who acted within the semi-rigid formalities of polite adult society than I ever had with my peers when I was in high school.
To wit, my peers were rude, and cruel, and lacked any moral framework at their age to know better than to brutally attack their peers. I was very sensitive to those attacks, and so I found that engaging adults was far less risky than engaging my peers. I cannot point fingers, because I too engaged in behaviors that I now find reprehensible; those sins are the subject of another post.
As smart and as determined I may be, I feel I have failed in a significant way by way of my inaction to sway the opinions of my friends, my peers, and the general public away from what to me is our government's obvious affront to the American way of life.
I have made a living on being smart for the sake of being smart, but I have not made any impact. I am smart for the sake of my own personal, short termed well being.
I am not so smart.
