Empyrée > Being supersmart

I’m supersmart. Or at least that is how I like to consider myself. I failed the Mensa test by quite a long shot, but I can assure you from experience this does not mean much – Mensans are the people among whom I feel the best, which certainly means more than a failed test.

Either at work or at play, I’m usually the smartest guy around. Not necessarily the fastest (I think I may even be slower than the average Joe), but certainly the best at connecting the dots. Sure, that could be said of any iNtuitive (MBTI) person, but I think there is more than that.

I long considered myself as inferior and needed several unrelated persons telling me otherwise to start believing it. I also share another common trait with (« certified ») supersmarts: I believe I am a deceptive person, that is, that people overestimates me. Add this to the well-known complex of autodidacts (my knowledge is worth nothing because I don’t have a diploma for it) and you will start to understand how far it may go.

I now am very proud to (consider myself to) be supersmart (although there is no objective reason to be proud of something one did not choose), but this is not a blessing. I may say that one lives in a state of segregation, but the optimistic in me prefers to say that supersmarts live on a higher ground. Maybe consider it as a « intellectual tetrachromacy: where you see two things, I see four and more to wait behind them. Also, if you see a two-level deep scenario, I see the layers three and four too. Once again, this is an iNtuitive trait, but I think it is particularly exarcebated in supersmarts.

Like Cassandra, I am usually right but to no avail. It seems I also suffer from Kretschmer’s sensitive paranoïa (the best article I found is French, unfortunately – Délire de relation des sensitifs).

Tonight, I had a revelation. I finally put words regarding my mindset (and that’s why I’m writing this blog entry). I usually am in what I call « data processing mode ». Most people are subjected to their surroundings. Me, I analyse my surroundings. Where you see pictures, odors and people, I see patterns. Do you know The Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan? Then consider his feeling of aloofness, this is what I experience most of the time (but on a much lower scale!). For this reason alone, believe me, being supersmart is not a blessing. I am tired of living alone.

Oh, by the way: I am not a mere nerd. I met enough of them to tell a nerd from a supersmart.