My Uncle Knew How Smart and Dumb I Was
And he probably still knows
I had always been kind of a smart kid. I usually did pretty well at school without trying too hard. A solid 85% student. I also was good at teaching myself things like drawing, photography, and the guitar. My parents never needed to help me much with things. I would just figure it out.
I was also a stubborn kid. It was hard for me to back down when confronted, and even harder to change my mind. When I was locked down on an idea, I was chained to it with a one-tonne shackle.
As I grew up, my family would visit my mom’s side over in Winnipeg every so often. It was usually the same old boring family dinners for the most part. But there was this one uncle who would sit me down and talk about abstract things like philosophy. We had a special kind of bond that I didn’t have with any other family members. He knew that I enjoyed talking about ideas and concepts. He knew these things held a lot of potential. He also knew they would drag me down.
When I hit my 20’s and started going to university, I was fascinated about all the things I was learning in my psychology and philosophy majors. I became enamoured by the great thinkers, and wanted to believe I could be like them someday. Coming up with big, giant, universal ideas became an obsession of mine. I knew there was some idea I could come up with that no one else had. There were patterns in things that others couldn’t see. So, after I finished school I spent a bulk of my time reading a lot and eventually writing. I didn’t really care where I worked or how much money I made as long as I could keep working on my ideas. That was my main driver.
My uncle saw right through that. While he never directly told me it was a horrible idea, he just strongly suggested that it wasn’t the right path. I resisted the idea of getting a professional job to make more money. The idea of working in an office offended me. It seemed so boring, so conventional. Yet, he kept emphasizing that I needed a stability, that it was crucial to set a foundation. No. That’s not right for me I argued back. I have the most amazing idea, and I’m going to write it and surprise the whole world.
He was right. That was dumb.
It took me nearly a decade of aimless roaming before I decided to go back to school and got the office job I have now. I’m making more money than I ever had before, and I actually like the work that I do. It challenges me in a way my odd jobs never did, and it exposes me to a world of big ideas I never would have seen without it. It eluded me before, but having the stability and foundation I have now actually lets me focus on my writing even more. It frees me from the worries of struggling to get by and the frustrations of jobs I hated, giving me a clearer headspace to sort through my ideas. It’s something I would have never learned until I crossed over to the other side.
To be honest, I would still like to put out that big idea someday. I’m just more realistic about what that really takes, and how I probably won’t ever make a living from it. My uncle knew all of this already. His message just wouldn’t get through my thick skull until I thinned it out a bit.
I’ve noticed my cousin, one of his daughters, is going through pretty much the same thing now. He expects she’ll also go back to school in a few years when she’s had enough, and he’s probably right again. She will have to bang her own head against the wall a few times before she realizes how much it hurts herself. I hope she figures it out soon. My cousin is a lot smarter than me in many ways, but probably just as dumb in a lot of ways too.
I feel like I’ve learned my lesson, and I finally get what my uncle was saying all these years. I’ve gained some wisdom. I’m a better person. But my uncle probably still knows how dumb I really am.
