To young people born under the weird planet of the SAT, intelligence was equated with agility, with raw acuity. It produced a certain sort of person of which I was a typical specimen: the mental contortionist, able to rise to almost every challenge placed before him, except the challenge of real self-knowledge.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the disconnect between perceived intelligence and true self-awareness, particularly in young individuals who excel academically.
Walter Kirn’s quote delves into the societal definition of intelligence as agility and quick thinking, often celebrated in academic settings like the SAT. However, he highlights a more profound challenge—true self-knowledge—which many intelligent individuals, despite their abilities to excel in external challenges, struggle to achieve. This suggests that being intellectually adept does not automatically equate to knowing oneself deeply and navigating the complexities of personal identity.
In practice
In a commencement speech to inspire graduates to seek more than just academic success.
Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to be perceived as serious, very thin ones as more honest, more real. Writers address these age-old expectations by filling their big books with philosophy and cramming their little ones with feeling.
In America, to be ID'd - sorted, tagged, and permanently filed - is to lose a bit of one's soul. To die a little. This sounds like a subtle, poetic notion. It's not. In American legal and cultural tradition, one essential privilege of citizenship is not having to prove it on demand.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.
I cured with the power that came through me. Of course, it was not I who cured,it was the power from the Outer World; the visions and ceremonies only made me like a whole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds. If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish.
Four-fifths of all our troubles would disappear, if we would only sit down and keep still.
It's not when you realize that nothing can help you — religion, pride, anything — it's when you realize that you don't need any aid.
I didn't appreciate the young woman that I was, or my young beauty, because I was so obsessed with the fact that I felt fat. It's never good to add to anybody else's suffering. It's an important topic to really get the gravity and the importance of - dealing with dignity.
A sure sign of ineptitude and malice is manifested when one's attacker is willing to cover himself with mud in order to try and make some of it adhere to his target.
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