Smart vs. Smart-ass
I am always having trouble with people who know a selection of random political, financial or historical trivia. Why? Because I don’t. My knowledge is strange and unrelated, sometimes just pieces of it, not even making a full picture. In my defence, I think knowing history is one of the hottest things. I just don’t have that type of memory. Usually, the aforementioned ones also love to rub it in my face. From then on, it is a sinking ship and even my weak arguments cannot save it.
Feeling smart for me is like feeling happy. It comes and goes. I have been feeling relatively smart these couple of months. I would regularly check in with my university, work, receive some praising for writing and just easily roll around, slowly nodding my head in “Yes, I am doing ok”.
Then I met this guy.
The most opinionated and shameless person I have seen in a while. Drowning me in theories of international relations and Chinese economic and social perspectives. At which point was I supposed to throw in my mediocre knowledge about music history or pubs of London? Or tell the story about how awesome it is to swim in a cloud of thousand sardines and walk towards a waterfall against the current?
And so I didn’t. Because he was a smart-ass. He would turn my words against me and test me on the knowledge of capitals (for God’s sake, I should definitely know the capital of Bolivia!).
Interactions with smart people are always pleasant, leave you feeling curious, motivated and thirsty for knowing more. Smart-ass, however, are the ones that leave you feeling destroyed, smothered in self-pity and watching TED videos for a quick fix of knowledge. You realize you have just been tricked into following their lead, but you are mad at yourself for not being as educated as you thought you were.
Smart-asses are the worst. With the self-confidence going down the drain, you also say goodbye to the illusions of yourself.
Or maybe they are the best. Infuriating, but waking you up from the stagnant, satisfactory-enough being.
I will never know the answer. The only thing that makes me feel good about myself now is a paper on Shostakovich I have to write. Damn, I am for sure better at this than you are!
He was hot, though.
