The Socratic Method...

Socrates, the father of modern philosophy, once said "The wise man knows that there is much that he does not know." I've always added the addendum "...and in that respect, I am very wise." But, recently I've found a lot of the things that I've taken for granted in the arena of "things that I know" to be quite different in the light of reality. The states of physical health in some of my friends that I thought far surpassed my own have been shaken to their core. The relationship status of other friends who I thought were made for each other have been ripped asunder before my very eyes. I always thought that as you get older, you learn more, and become smarter. What I'm finding is that as you grow older, you re-learn things that you already thought that you knew, and end up feeling dumber. 

I've always been told that I'm a smart kind of guy. My teachers have said it, my family have said it, my friends have said it, but I've never really felt that way. After hearing it so often, it was just easy enough not to try to argue the point, so I gave into all the "labeling." I'll agree that I'm smart, but I don't believe it or see myself in that way. I've always just seen myself as a relatively unremarkable kind of guy. I'm a bit more outgoing and unapologetic about my opinion than your average person, but "smart" has never been a word that I'd default to in an autobiographical sense.

What does that word really mean anyway? I've often said that I'm a "compendium of useless information" because a lot of the facts that I remember aren't very useful throughout the course of a given day. The quadratic formula, all seven modes of a major scale, my phone number from when I was 12 years old, these have all simply been insects caught in the fly paper of my brains memory banks. None of these are useful to me in any real sense.

But, society is all about that far-too-over-utilized "Bell Curve." If you're to the left, then you're "Below Average." If you're on the hump, then you're "Average." If you're to the right, then you're "Above Average." Personally, I've found that either by my unwillingness to conform or my ability to memorize useless data like an interactive, user-friendly thumb-drive, that I've been thrown into the last category for better or for worse. I guess that the best thing to do is simply to make use of what I have been given to the best of my ability and to the most beneficial outcome for humankind. Although, as I say this, I find another quote from Albert Einstein echoing through my mind "I want to know God's thoughts; everything else is just details."