What is intelligence

and haters, thank you for reading too. If it wasn't for you -- I'd be irrelevant.

 jk I actually am irrelevant, but whatever. 

Part I: Journal

Dear Diary Introduction,
[and recording my thoughts on the quarantine South Carolina, USA]

TRIGGER WARNING: DEPRESSION, SUICIDE

The last year or so in graduate school has made me really understand and chew upon two concepts. One being intelligence, the other being vocation (notice, I didn't say career). I'll get back to this concept in Part II.

First I desire to reflect on my current mood in the world as of April 2020-- over the last few months or so I've been reading. And reading, and well. Reading. Before pregnancy (and simultaneously the beginning of graduate school) , really -- I used to read a lot. I have been doing that quite often AGAIN actually.

Remember: This has been my quarantine reflections from a position of privilege that allows me to stay indoors most days with ease. This is just my perspective, my thoughts, my feelings on a historical event.

It feels good to be inside quarantine and not feel guilty for being, doing, healing, processing, existing. There's some peace in knowing that just for the moment; if I am at home, I am okay. I am saving the world? Or at least society doesn't make a big fuss out of me staying at home. I feel at peace with my thoughts. I like this.

Perhaps that is because depression has made me live inside my own box of agoraphobia over the years. Truly, self imprisonment. Odd jobs, seasonal work, always traveling, long blocks of time "free."

Maybe as a student there is some privilege in that statement, given, sure. But, trust me when I say -- in some way shape or form; my depression and anxiety has isolated me in the house for years. Sure, the situation has changed. The state has changed, the location, the people. And -- for some reason there are long periods of depressive moments where my world is reduced to my bedroom, sleep, and baths.

It's a crazy form of imprisonment.
I am aware.

I am finally healing. I am finally releasing my creative essence without restraint and without fear. It's been an incredible journey, emotionally -- to be able to heave and ho the choppy waters my internal waterbed of tears, anxieties, and fears.

Yet, instead of treading waters in this unstable environment.
I am now learning to calm the waters to that of a serene pond.

I am learning how to shift perspectives, I am learning how to heal internally in a method that isn't full of self shame and hatefulness. Why? Perhaps, I gave up and decided I wanted to live.

I remember once, a therapist in wilderness telling a girl there who was suicidal; "you have to get off the fence -- do you want to heal? do you not want to heal? Just choose." I inserted the word heal for the actual word he used: die. I hated this memory for years. It was two days after Christmas 2007. Group five (my group) and group two were both together and united over this holiday. I didn't know Jason the therapist very well. He was the "other groups" therapist. We had ours. We liked ours. Our therapist didn't do this wild group therapy sessions where someone ended up on separates afterwards due to a breakdown.

...that would be nutty.

He came out and did a giant group therapy course with us. It's then that he focused on Maddie and her will to die. Subsequently inside the same group -- he then proceeded to call me arrogant.

I wrestled with this comment for years. Internally beating myself up. I have decided to encode self empathy. Truly my behavior may have seem pompous and over confident at times? It's another head of a low self worth coin.

In truth I related a lot to Maddie over the years. I wasn't fully dead. Yet, living depressed isn't living in full color. Depression kills a piece of you and traps you in a movie of anguish that you cannot turn off. My death was one of self enslavement to my own peril. I had a really hard time leaving the house, and being in a group setting for long periods of time. I used to hate these moments, and shame myself for "slowing down". I used to shame myself for not being fast enough. For not keeping up with my peers. For not being the first to bloom. For not blooming on time or in accordance to everyone else. I beat myself up internally for a long time.

Slowing down has given me a type of inner peace. The time the quarantine has given me has allowed me space to heal. Maybe I do not have corona, sure. Yet, depression can be deadly. Healing from a life long misery of never being able to lift yourself up out of this muddy quagmire of a mind --- when you know the earth could be full of sunshine and roses; feels better. It just, feels better to heal now.

I have allowed myself to slow down. I have allowed myself to move at a different pace. I have allowed myself to truly breath in the peaceful pond of source energy.

When I think back to the memory of Jason. I find the word "heal" to be an acceptable terminology not "die". Especially now dealing with patients and education on change. I like implanting that new word over the old memory that is tattered and worn. It feels better. Healing feels better than being stagnant. Healing feels better than death.

I want to focus on the light.

Maybe that is the gift this pause has given me? A new perspective.

Aloha,
Laura

Part II: Define Intelligence

"The last year or so in graduate school has made me really understand and chew upon two concepts. One being intelligence, the other being vocation* (notice, I didn't say career)."

I hope you read this little blurb like a journal exercise on intelligence, and me piecing together my thoughts after many months of thinking and chewing upon the topic. I feel a lot of peace writing this. I hope you get as much out of this as I did. I think this is quite a great re-frame of the topic.

note: Intelligence has been on my mind over the last year as I constantly compare my outcomes to those of my peer group around me. It has caused me to redefine my definition and also to think a bit more laterally. Three books have come to mind specifically about this. In these books intelligence is defined in such a beautiful method. So word for word I am going to copy pieces and parts of these three book and arrange them into an order that seems to fit my narrative.

I just wanted to give my deep gratitude for the authors that channeled these pieces of creativity. If these pieces are not directly quoted, I took the liberation of adding a few words, sentences, paragraphs to connect ideas and themes throughout the three books, enjoy:

"What is Intelligence? Intelligence is not a matter of IQ, grades in school, or years of study. Intelligence is instead a 'way of acting.' This means that if you act intelligently, you are smart. If you act stupidly, you are stupid, irrespective of grades or measures on an IQ test."

"What, then by definition is an intelligent act? The answer is simple. An intelligent act is something you do that moves you closer to something you really want. A stupid act is something you do that does not move you closer to something you want or, even worse, moves you away from it."

"You personally define a smart or stupid act when you decide what you want and what you don't want. As Winston Churchill said, 'I long ago stopped listening to what people said. Instead, I look at what they do. Behavior is the only truth.'"

"Action is everything. How can you tell what a person really wants, thinks, feels, believes, and is committed to? Simple. You just look at his or her actions. It is not what people say, wish hope, or intent that counts. It is only what they do, and especially what they do when faced with temptation or put under pressure"

"Someone says, 'I want to be successful in my career and in life.' [Yes,] He [does] actually believes it. But then you observe his behavior. This person arrives at work at the last possible minute, leaves at the first possible minute, and hurries home so that he doesn't miss the latest episode of his favorite television show. Clearly, based on his behavior, his goal is not to be successful in his career but rather to watch television. How do you know? Because that is exactly what he is doing -- every night after work."

note: In order to make intelligent moves in your life, you first must know where you are. And afterwards you must be aware of the direction that you want to go. Intelligent moves in life travel in line to where you want to go. But what if -- after years of diligent work towards the goals that are outlined in gold upon the horizon. Are not that bright up close? Just because I make intelligent moves does not mean I get a guaranteed outcome of success.

"All those years when I was diligently laboring away at both my day jobs and my writing practice, I knew there was never any promise that nay of this would work out."

"I always knew that I might not get what I wished for --- that I might never become a published writer. Not everybody makes it to a place of comfortable success in the arts. Most people don't. And while I've always believed in magical thinking, I wasn't a child, either; I knew that wishing would not make it so. Talent might not make it so, either. Dedication might not make it so. Even amazing professional contacts -- which I didn't have, in any case -- might not make it so."

"Creative living is stranger than other, more worldly pursuits. The usual rules do not apply. In normal life, if you are good at something and you work hard at it, you will likely succeed. In creative endeavors, maybe not. Or maybe you will succeed for a spell, and then never succeed again. You might be offered rewards on a silver platter, even as a rug is being simultaneously pulled out from under you. You might be adored for awhile, then go out of fashion. Other dumber people might take your place as critical darlings.

"The patron goddess of creative success can sometimes seem like a rich, capricious old lady who lives in a giant mansion on a distant hill and who makes really weird decisions about who gets her fortune. She sometimes rewards charlatans and ignores the gifted. She cuts people out of her will who loyally served her for their entire lives, and then gives a Mercedes to that cute boy who cut her lawn one. She changes her mind about things. We try to divine her motives, but the remain occult. She is never obliged to explain herself to us. In short, the goddess of creative success may show up for you, or she may not. Probably best, then, if you don't count on her, or attach your definition of personal happiness to her whims. Maybe better to reconsider your definition of success period.

"Maybe better to reconsider your definition of success period.

"For my part, I decided early on to focus on my devotion to the work about all. That would be how I measured my worth. I knew that conventional success would depend upon three factors -- talent, luck and discipline -- and I knew that two of those three things would never be under my control. Genetics randomness had already determined how much talent I'd been allotted, and destiny [had a] randomness [to her] would [have already] account[ed] for my share of [the] luck. The only piece I had any control over was my discipline. Recognizing that, it seemed like the best plan would be to work my ass off. That was the only card I had to play, so I played it hard.

"Mind you, hard work guarantees nothing in realms of creativity. (nothing guarantees anything in realms of creativity.) But I cannot help but think that devotional discipline is the best approach. Do what you love to do, and do i with both seriousness and lightness. At least then you will know that you have tried and that whatever the outcome you have traveled a noble path."

"I have a friend, an aspiring musician, whose sister said to her one day, quite reasonably, "what happens if you never get anything out of this? What happens if you pursue your passion forever, but success never comes? how will you feel then, having wasted your entire life for nothing?"

note: I feel like that has been the question I have been asking myself forever. I feel like her hesitation to why her sister would want to pursue a life of reckless abandonment of creativity. It's not stable. It's not something you can count on -- like a big corporation. Yeah, I really should count on really big corporations for my life long stability. I shouldn't put any efforts into myself; I should instead invest into the interest of others! When they make it big, maybe I'll get a bonus.

note: I say this with a sarcastic undertone, because I am illuminating a certain mindset I've had for a long time. My dad is currently working part time. My brother, an undergraduate potential dental student, is working as his only assistant. They are down to four employees. My dad's entire retirement was built mostly upon the steadiness of his business. And now? It makes me wonder how much I actually want to put into others dreams instead of building my own.

note: My father built his incredible business, and at the end of the day -- his moderately large dental practice was brought to it's knees. Will he ever be able to recover to the likes of what he once was doing? What about his associates? What about his associate that just left his office last year to work for herself? What will her practice look like next year? These are unpredictable times. How long will I spend building, doing, and bleeding for someone else's creativity?

note: So it blew this comet through my mindset of what stability looked like. Maybe, at the end of the day -- even a man as strong and powerful as my father... maybe he didn't always know all the answers, even now.

note: I can't focus on some vision of success that may or may not come. Maybe it's just for the sheer joy of creating. The sheer joy of how it feels to finish a piece. The healing that comes from bringing something from idea to fruition -- maybe that's the true reasons creatives -- create.

"My friend, with equal reason, replied, "If you can't see what I am already getting out of this, then I'll never be able to explain it to you."

"when it's for love, you will always do it anyhow."

note: There's another question that haunts me at night? What gives me the ability to THINK I have something special to offer the world that others do not? What makes me believe in this concept of magical thinking? This was a belief that I had to re-wire. Am I pathologically unique? Am I so alone in this world -- really? Or is it all an illusion that I am so different than every other human being that is walking this earth. I read this in the book, Mastery by Robert Green. And I believed the concept of primal uniqueness covers the exact form of "everyone has something special to offer" fluffiness that I want to believe in. If I have this talent -- why shouldn't other? Why do I think I am so blessed to be so creative, so emotional, so full of spirit and ideas?

note: Primal uniqueness teaches me -- that you and I are no different. That I create because of what is inside of me; that is my art form -- the body of work that I create over my lifespan. You have a primal uniqueness that you can hone and harness to bring your creation into the world.

"This primal uniqueness naturally wants to assert and express itself, but some experience it more strongly than others. With Masters it is so strong that it feels like something that has its own external reality -- a force, a voice, destiny. In moments when we engage in an activity that corresponds to our deepest inclinations, we might experience a touch of this. We feel as if the words we write or the physical movements come so quickly that they are coming from outside of us. We are literally inspired the Latin word meaning something from outside breathing into us.

"Let us state it in the following way: at your birth a seed is planted. That seed is your uniqueness. It wants to grow, transform itself, and flower to it's full potential. It has a natural, assertive energy to it. Your Life's Task is to bring that seed to flower, to express your uniqueness through your work. You [all of us] have a destiny to fulfill. The stronger you feel and maintain it -- as a force, a voice, or in whatever form -- the greater your chance for fulfilling this Life's Task and achieving Mastery.

note: You can quickly see that we all have the seed. It is up to all of us to cultivate it in whatever means possible. That is our responsibility. Also not to define success in terms of fame, praise of ones work -- but rather in the humbleness and simplicity of sheer creation. What did I create? What do I have control over in my life? What am I adding to the body of work that I will cultivate throughout this life cycle on the Earth? How will I utilize my talents that I was given? Will I slow down enough to notice them sparkle? Will I enjoy my own gifts? Isn't that the point?

note: To create is to heal. The creative is simply healing from a wound deep inside themselves that they want to express in the simplest way possibly. Sometimes that healing comes across as joyful music, and sometimes films in which you cannot stop crying. Some art will turn into a Picasso. Some is just meant for the moment. Don't keep this limiting belief from stopping the creative in you.

The three books I quoted are: Get Smart! by Brian Tracy; Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert; and Mastery by Robert Greene.

note: ily :)

The best thing for mental health? Writing. Creating. Healing. And allowing the process of healing to take place.