I live in a dilemma of sorts.
I’m an intelligent person. I like big ideas. And learning. And understanding. And I like to be around other people who like those same things.
The dilemma, of sorts, is that a lot of people who genuinely like knowledge- so much so that they are always trying to learn and grow- are often not nice people. Many are quite unpleasant to be around. Knowledge, for them, is often more important than people.
I think I used to be (more?) unpleasant to be around as well because I thought it was important to impress people with what I knew and what I was learning. If I was with smart people I wanted to impress them that I was smart too. If I was talking with someone who was not that smart – from my point-of-view – I seemed to think that they’d appreciate me helping them become smart. When I think about it, neither approach was all that smart.
What I’ve come to learn is that most everyone wants other people to think they’re smart or at least interesting. And, most people are when we really stop and listen. And ask better questions.
Asking better questions is really a smarter thing to do than giving better information because most people don’t really give a rat’s butt about what we know. Their interest is in having us know what they know. The bonus is that as knowledge seekers, good questions allow us to learn more stuff.
So. What do you think?
Charles