On the Difficulties of Living with a High IQ

How writing makes it a little easier

I’m sometimes fascinated looking at the subscriber list of this blog. I get lots of analytics. Many of my avid readers are people I’ve known earlier in life that I wasn’t particularly close with and who I think considered me a bit odd. I can’t quite blame them. For most of my life, I was very socially awkward. To an extent, I still am.

It’s very difficult for me to engage in conversation with any average person when the things I want to talk about are basically what I bring up on this blog. Frequently, I want to discuss even deeper topics like the theory of consciousness or what it means if our brains are finite state machines. As with earlier in my life, people seem to think I’m strange for wanting to think broadly about the world and mine the greater depths of meaning and the human condition. To this day, even members of my own immediate family have very directly made me feel like an outcast and told me how strange they think I am for the unique way that I look at the world.

So I finally got my IQ tested earlier this year. To no one’s surprise, it was abnormally high. I am not trying to brag. I would pay good money to knock 20-30 points off of it. As the book The Curse of the High IQ describes, having a high IQ is an extremely lonely - and in fact challenging - life. All of society is designed around catering to, well, normal people. (It rightly should, as they comprise the vast majority of the population.) However, to those of us who draw outside the lines, living in this world is in fact difficult, if not outright painful. Everything, from how we relax to socializing and enjoying romantic encounters, is entirely different. And of course, everyone we meet classifies us as someone who is broken who needs to be fixed. I know I was seen that way from a very early age by family, classmates, and teachers.

Work, in particular, is difficult for gifted adults. We need jobs that challenge our minds constantly. If they don’t, then we become frustrated and upset, like a border collie stuck in an apartment with no toys. In the end, entrepreneurship is almost always the avenue that suits us best, as almost nothing else allows us to fully exercise our mental capacity.

Personal relationships are very difficult, as the small talk that pervades our society feels like nails on a chalkboard. But when we try to steer the conversation towards a deeper topic, we are met with incredulous stares if not downright hostility, forever marked as outsiders.

For a long time, I used alcohol as a crutch to dull my mind as much as possible to be able to better relate to others, and it worked rather well. I also masked myself, purposefully censoring my thoughts and desires to talk about what I found were more interesting topics or do more stimulating activities in the interest of maintaining friendships. It’s really only since I gave up drinking (and even then only after a few years of sobriety) that my desires to be entirely myself have come about. 

And that’s where this blog comes in. I’m free to write as deeply as I want. And guess what? What I write seems to resonate. I get a lot of positive feedback from many of you. And it’s delightfully rewarding.

Do you have any idea how most people would react if I tried to discuss 95% of the topics I write about on this blog with the average person I met? I think complete bewilderment, right before they kindly excused themselves, would be a good summary.

For some reason, it’s significantly more socially acceptable to digest deeply intellectual topics in our society over the written medium than it is in our day to day discussions. I find that odd. It’s a shame because it means I have very few people to bounce my ideas off of before publishing them. I’m still finding my place in Boston after Covid, despite living less than two miles away from MIT and Harvard. Most people want to drink and be merry, not discuss the coming collapse of commercial real estate.

Now, I’m not saying they are at fault for that. I’m just saying having a brain like mine is lonely. It’s not all bad. People are frequently shocked at how deep a life I live, such as when they discover my large modern art collection after thinking I’m just another engineer.

I’m lucky that I have enough friends with whom I can enjoy deep conversations, so I’m not completely alone. Plus, my girlfriend is also uniquely gifted. I feel tremendously lucky having someone in my life to intellectually challenge me. She’s everything I had ever hoped for in a partner with that one simple gift.

I’m not here to lament on the sad state of intellectualism in America, although it is quite sad. I honestly don’t think I need to waste any more battery life on the topic. What I am here is to celebrate that I have finally found an output, this blog, that lets me connect with others in an honest and deep way, without any censorship of any kind, without having to dull my thoughts or dumb them down, and let you all know how much it means to me. And how much it means that you read it and appreciate it. In many ways, it’s a relief from the loneliness and a form of validation that my thoughts are appreciated.

So, thank you for giving me some meaning and being here with me. I promise to continue to deliver more “intelligent and thought provoking” articles, as one reader put it, for you to enjoy. I also promise, since several have asked, to go a bit deeper into topics, such as my commercial real estate article. That one was a lot of fun to write, although it took almost a week of research. You may not realize it, but a lot of effort goes into writing these pieces frequently.

So thank you for being here with me and I hope you have a wonderful week.