humbling and opening yourself to intelligence
I was stuck in the waiting room at a doctor’s office for over an hour tonight, due to scheduling conflicts. Ended up chatting with another patient, who would also be running late to yoga class. Hers, Bikram, mine, Vinyasa. I asked her about Bikram, sharing what I had heard. And in engaging with her, I realized something.
This girl listened to me voice my concerns about yoga, tell her about what I’d read and pose questions, with open eyes and genuine interest—before adamantly stating that she disagreed and that what I’d heard was biased. But the point is that she put her knowledge and opinions aside, and fully, earnestly opened herself up to what she could learn from me first.
She reminded me of a few other people I know, and in thinking about those people, I realized that they are the brightest people I know. What makes people smart is not how much they know, but how much they are willing to know and how much they know they don’t know (tongue twister much?). All-encompassing curiosity and not just eagerness, but also openness to digest new information and questions from absolutely anyone, and then the courage to take that information and process it themselves.
All of this may seem obvious, but realizing for myself the underlying trait in all of my “smart” friends (and strangers) lit a bulb in my head. And also made me realize why I easily have little respect for those who flaunt how much they know, because doing so is ironically ignorant…and nothing short of pompous.
On that note, I’m off to go shower, because if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that yoga class makes you smell like feet*.
* Possibly my least favorite smell
