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Throughout the awkward, gangly years of middle school, I used to dream about being the smartest person in every room. Academic validation was a necessity for me to feel recognized and even wanted, especially when I knew I wasn’t breaking any hearts in the looks department then.
And so I put my all into every math test, every five-paragraph essay and every teacher’s appreciation week for three-straight years. I attended the office hours — basically just lunch break — of my sixth grade Spanish teacher, and I wrote an extra 500 words on every paper just because I could.
By the end of eighth grade, I was smart. It had worked. But even after all of the statistical formulas I had memorized, what I still couldn’t predict was that I felt deeply, deeply unhappy.
I thought that in order to be a good person, I had to be a great student. But in the process of putting in my all, I had put down all of those who couldn’t.
Intelligence only constitutes a very slim portion of who we are. It could be argued that your IQ heavily dictates many other facets of life — your academic success and degree, therefore your job, therefore your salary, therefore your lifestyle — but this thought process disregards a fundamental, key factor that often disrupts such a simple trajectory: satisfaction. In other words, happiness. In other words, sometimes our heart usurps our head.
Kindness is a choice. Choose it.
Take the show “Ted Lasso” for example. When it comes to soccer, Ted, a longtime American football coach, is the most unqualified, inexperienced “stupid American” to coach a British soccer team. Spoiler alert: He’s intentionally hired by AFC Richmond’s owner in a purposeful move to ruin the team and get back at her ex-husband, the previous owner. By conventional sports standards, Ted is incompetent.
Despite this fact, and despite the whole fanbase rooting on his downfall, Ted is unwaveringly, frustratingly kind to everyone he meets. He accepts everyone for who they are, even when nobody in the city can do the same for him. His energy is undeniably infectious, shown in the team’s upward trajectory in both their personal growth and, eventually, in their skill.
It ultimately didn’t matter how “stupid” Ted was. Did he make idiotic plays? All the time. Did he have unconventional practice drills? If you count exploring sewers as unorthodox, then probably. But in the end, AFC Richmond still persevered. Not just because they played good soccer but because of how Ted supported them. Because he was kind.
And that’s just the thing: Smartness, intelligence, IQ — they’re all just a means to an end, aren’t they? Nobody remembers your GPA in 50 years. Nobody deems your worth from a class ranking or from those extra 500 words. In that sense, intelligence has an expiration date.
When we all inevitably regress to vegetables, you won’t be thinking about how many times you raised your hand; you’ll be thinking about the hands that hold yours as you fade away on your death bed. To quote Ted himself, “In the end, what’s more important: being right or being kind?”
I can’t go back and choose to not care about school. Even now, a small part of myself harbors a need to academically impress — maybe it’s inherent to who I am. But that is not the ruler I use to judge who others are anymore, and it shouldn’t be the measurement you use on yourself or those around you, either.
In 50 years, people will remember you for your softness. They will remember that compliment you gave them in the sixth grade, the one nobody else had ever said with such sincerity before. They will remember the handwritten letters for birthday cards, tears of laughter and splitting up clementines. They will remember you for your compassion.
Kindness is a choice. Choose it.
Reach Emma Souza at letters@collegian.com or on Twitter @_emmasouza.
