Smart Is Overrated

The suggestion of this article is that smartness is a detriment to happiness, not the way to it.

Wait, Wha??

OK, I’ll put it another way: the reason you struggle in life is because you’re too reliant on intelligence as a source of happiness. And, you rely on that intelligence to navigate a life that was meant to be explored and experienced, not calculated.

You can’t outsmart your internal struggles.

Yet, most everywhere you turn, being “smart” is touted as a primary key to success of all kinds — financial and otherwise. What’s missing is the part of you that is not smart, just happy.

“Smart” — by any reasonable definition — is the ability to calculate a future scenario, taking action based on that prediction, having that prediction play out as calculated, and the realizing some reward for that calculation; usually financial.

Contrast that with the quality known as “life”, which is, instead, a series of random and unknowable developments that evoke wonder and surprise. “Life” is the symbol for ‘an experience to be enjoyed and wondered at’. This is the first priority of our humanity.

Here’s what is often missed in this discussion: given that the future contains infinite and unknowable possibilities, smart is only smart in hindsight, and only as an observation. It is not a skill or attribute with a predictable result. Most likely, it is much closer to the notion of luck.

In other words, smart is only a designation assigned by others, and about others, on the outside looking in, and then reported on in hindsight and as a statement of fact. It is never an assessment of yourself and your actions. Yet, we talk about it as a universal truth that can be understood, learned, and modeled.

How all of this relates to basic garden-variety happiness is this:

Happiness can be said to be the eager anticipation of life’s unknowable and unpredictable — but always wonderous — developments. Anything that even suggests it can be foretold and learned is, by definition, not life. It is, instead, what computers do.

Is a computer happy?

Here’s the story of life — your life: it is messy, illogical, and random. This is the stuff computers were designed to rid from our lives. Yet, life continues to be full of ups and downs, surprising developments, and unknowability. And, we wouldn’t want it any other way.

For life to be any more perfect, predictable, and smart would just be just less of it.

Life is the only quality that provides for an experience we know of as “happy”. More life equals more happy; in all its messy, illogical, and stupidly-random glory.

What we call stupid is a failure to plan for avoiding some future threat. But, stupid — like smart — is also just an observation made in hindsight by others, and about others. All of that is a distraction from the life you seek.

If you are struggling to find more of those magical moments in life that are full of laughter, love, and creativity, I would like to suggest that you abandon any attempt to make “smart” plans for the future; yours or anyone else’s.

Or, at least, when you do, you are acutely aware of how this is a distraction from the enjoyment of life, not the way to it.

For example, ‘smart planning for retirement’ is code for suffering countless indignities on your way there, including years of unfulfilling work, for the promise of some magic future where all will be perfect.

This notion is clearly an attempt to avoid the perceived threat of poverty in old age; and planted there by those invested in seeing you sacrifice your own dignity for someone else’s gain.

This is not to say that taking a few simple and well-known steps to conduct a responsible life can’t be a part of a fulfilled future also. But, the overriding reality is that the unknowable aspects of life will have a greater influence on your future than any well-conceived plan ever will.

All of this “smart planning” actually diminishes your influence on the future because you are living in constant fear of one tiny possibility for your future. A life lived in fear is not a powerful or fulfilling life.

Fear is the myopic focus on survival. Everything we do in life that does not enhance the experience that life is a product of fear. The pursuit of both “smart”, and an avoidance of “stupid”, are more evidence of that fear.

To be fearless is another way of saying “to be content and satisfied with your life”.

The notions of smart and/or stupid have no place in a life of internal peace and satisfaction. Satisfaction with life is the path I wish to travel, and the one that I will write about as I go. It is a path of allowing life to reveal all of its unpredictable and unimaginable secrets and gifts by honoring the stupidity of it all.