Get Stupid in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

This week I kind of went outside myself and tried to observe my daily life from another’s point-of-view, mainly because someone remarked at how busy I seem to be. I realized that that is true. This is just how I live my life; because of how easily bored I can become, I usually fill my life to the brim with appointments and tasks. One of my friends who happens to be a professor at the college I’m attending remarked that we are six weeks into the semester already.

The reason I was surprised by this is because it means that I have had six weeks without a day off. Aside from school, I am working (something I never did while I was in school previously), plus I am still dealing with the legal ramifications of my incident early in the summer, and so that means I have not had any single day of rest or freedom from responsibilities since early August.

I say I was surprised because when I mentioned my lack of repose to my professor-friend, she immediately became concerned that I might be “burning out”. She told me it was dangerous for me to overwork myself. I didn’t want to tell her that this was primarily how I functioned during the entirety of my school career. If I didn’t have these legal obligations to take care of, I would probably find some cause or club that needed help and then busy myself with that. Even the one period of time that I had free, that I specifically designated as “free time”, I ended up occupying with a job that I really had no desire to do.

My mind cannot be idle because things happen. People worry that I can’t have a social life, but I’ve proven that is not true… but I wonder how concrete that proof is. My social life is almost always exclusively restricted to designated times and spaces. I do not see friends or socialize unless I am in the designated times and spaces to do so.

Going back to the “danger”, I’m always amused when someone brings up the idea of danger to me because it really shows how poorly they understand me. I remember, I had a professor who was explaining a communication instrument called the Cognitive Complexity Index. It essentially identifies how many things a person identified within a given context to help them make meaning of a situation. Theoretically, people with high Cognitive Complexity can therefore understand things like subtext and sarcasm, and people with low Cognitive Complexity would only be able to take things at surface-value.

We, the students, had to take the instrument in order to understand its use and possibly determine its effectiveness in our own fields of study. When I took it and the professor viewed my results, he told me that in all of his years, and he began communication research in the late-sixties, before this instrument was even designed and implemented, he had never seen someone score with such a high complexity as me. I’m not saying this to make myself sound smart, in fact, it was quite the opposite. He seemed alarmed by my results.

He started asking me questions that seemed rather odd at first, but then I realized he was actually confirming his own suspicions about having such a high level of Cognitive Complexity. Through his questions, I began to see how I see things and why I have done the things I do.

I perceive danger in nearly every moment of my life. I do not cross a street without seriously thinking about the fact that I could die. When I was walking home tonight, I was prepared for the contingency that there might be a stranger lurking in a bush on the sidewalk. There has never been a stranger there before, but in my mind, it is just enough space for someone to hide if they had the malicious intent to assault someone.

I realized that this why I have laughed when people showed concern about me having been in a “bad neighborhood” after dark or when I was held at gunpoint or any of the other numerous times I’ve been a hair’s-breadth away from death. I see the possibility of death everywhere so I perceive no extra depth to threats the way some people do.

My little brother attended Umpqua Community College (where the shooting occurred) a few years ago. The people around me had seriously intense reactions to the incident. I remained as I always have been. That could just as easily have happened at the school I go to. I have thought of that as a possibility. Many times. I’ve thought about the fact that I could die in a movie theater, the drive-thru, at church, waiting to pick up my dry cleaning or any other number of circumstances.

I see death everywhere.

My professor speculated that it is because I have been exposed to death so much so early in life. He asked me how I go on living, why I’m not crippled with fear because typically people who are so hyper-aware of these types of things are in therapy or have difficulty functioning in society until they have found some perspective on it.

I said, “I’m smart enough to know that I can’t live forever and that death will take me some day.”

“Do you think that prevents you from forming genuine relationships with people?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I replied.

“Well,” he said, “here’s hoping you get stupid.”