Growing up, I had two heroes that helped to shape who I was and who I wanted to be when I got older: Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan.
Geeks, to the highest order of magnitude to be sure, but they were also philosophers and poets and writers and men of peace and constructive thought.
My step-dad bought me a book about Albert Einstein when I turned twelve, and on the inside cover of the six hundred page book (that I read several times within a few months), he wrote, “Einstein was not only smart, he was a man of principles and a man that searched for balance in all things. Don’t forget to strive for that, Andrew.”
When I was twelve, the idea of balance in all things was mildly lost on me. I knew what he was trying to tell me, but at twelve, there was no need for balance. That’s what parents were for: to help me find my own equilibrium and eventually stand on my own. Or so I thought.
I poured myself in to intellectual endeavors when I was young. I spent my spare time wandering through hospitals talking to doctors and nurses, lab technicians, and visiting technicians in energy departments, nuclear physics labs, and just about any other place I could get in to. Legally or not.
I wanted to change the world. I wanted to be intelligent and discover something about the reality around us that nobody else had ever known.
I had a reputation for a lot of years in middle school and high school as one of “the smartest dumb kids” in class. By that, it was meant that I had awful scores in just about every class, but I could provide a meaningful response on just about any question that was given to me about any number of subjects.
I never did well in school. I couldn’t handle the structure, the meaningless exercises, and the slow speed at which class was always paced. I hated it. The only classes I tended to do well in was Math and Science, and only when I had teachers that allowed me to move ahead of the class.
By the time I was a Freshmen in high school, I was taking calculus at the community college and an additional class for statistics and probabilities.
I had two other classes that year that I did extremely well in: Programming and Electronics, and again, it was because both teachers allowed me to move ahead of the class and work on more advanced concepts. By the end of that year, I was programming servos and robots to perform complicated tasks and, eventually, to battle.
I failed every other class. Every. Single. One.
It could be argued that, because I spent 90% of my time completely stoned or drugged out of my mind, that I could have done better in other ways. I guess I will never know, but I doubt it. The thing is, I never failed a test in any of my classes. None. I just couldn’t stand to do the work and plod along at a snails pace. So I never did.
And really, that’s the way I’ve been ever since then. I hate waiting. I hate taking the slow and tried course, and I’ve always been the one in the car pointing off the paved road and saying, “Hey, what if we take that one instead?”
Sure, it’s bumpier, it’s crazier, and we might lose a few passengers along the way, but damn it, it’ll be more efficient once a few people go along and smooth it out.
And the thing is, it could be said that I was relatively smart back then, but now I’m little more than a hack that tries to scrape by with what I’ve got. I was never smart enought to go to college, and if I did, I doubt I would be very successful.
This morning I was thinking about what my step-dad had written in that book, and I realized all the things that he was trying to tell me, and I realized all the ways that I’ve failed.
I’m not a very balanced person. Having concentrated so strictly on the intellectual pursuits when I was young, I neglected to expand any other part of me.
Now I’m so wedged in to this little slice of life, I seriously doubt there’s any way to change who I am or who I’ve become.
I’m a parody of myself. It’s disheartening, but at the same time, it’s a relief to know that I’ll never really be much more than I am now. This is it. I’m not sure if it’s okay, but some day, it will have to be.