OH MY GOD THEY'RE NOT SMARTER THAN ME
or How To Cope With The Nauseating Reality That People Are All Idiots Like Us
It’s happened a few times.
I think the first was meeting with an accountant. They were being paid a lot of money to provide some guidance on a fairly big business deal.
Hiring a professional to chaperone us through this very stressful time felt right. They could bring their expertise and experience and we could relax knowing that we were in the care of someone much much smarter than ourselves.
At one point, they seemed to be stuck on what our next move should be.
It seemed obvious to me. So obvious that I was embarrassed to even vocalize it.
Surely, my suggestion would be laughed out of the room.
Surely, it would be a naive thought that would only come from someone who hadn’t studied and seen a million reasons why it was a naive thought.
I mustered up the courage and sheepishly offered it up.
There was a brief silence and then…
“That’s a great idea!”
What?
Oh no.
An idea from me, a non-expert in this field, should not be a ‘great idea’, for I am not only a non-expert I am also, and I know this for fact, an idiot.
This was a terrible development.
It was unnerving. It made me doubt gravity.
The ease I had been living in knowing that people much smarter than me were guiding our ships evaporated.
Again, I’m an idiot… but the idea was a great one and it worked.
It must have been a fluke, right?
Nope.
It’s happened numerous times. Specifically with lawyers and politicians.
They’re all idiots (and I say that as a professional idiot).
Perhaps well read and highly trained idiots (or maybe just lucky), but idiots like you and me nonetheless.
Now, before you start getting all “I’m as smart as a doctor/lawyer/electrician/etc.” you’re probably not.
There are people MUCH smarter than you and I doing various important things.
But they’re just people… and people are idiots.
We’re all just people.
Some are amazing and some are awful.
None of us is perfect.
Side Note: I firmly believe that knowing you’re an idiot
makes you less of an idiot than the idiots who don’t think they’re idiots
The lesson here is this…
Doubting yourself and others is good, it’s healthy, but only to a degree.
Question things.
Offer ideas and be ready to learn why those ideas may not work,
or worse… why they’re great.
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I learned this covering corporate America. There’s a whole mystique built up around these powerful CEOs. They might have expertise in some ways, but they are simply people who figured out how to climb the ladder and get people to do what they wanted.
It occurred to me a few years ago that I am free (and correct) to completely ignore what others think when I realized that the random person judging me wasn't smarter or better qualified than I am. That realization was such an eye-opener!