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October 7, 2010

Tempus Carborundum

I'm fairly smart.  Not a genius or anything, but smarter than average if the 'smartness' tests we took in school are at all accurate.  I'm fairly perceptive and have a pretty quick wit.  I guess you could even call me sharp.


But sometimes it's not easy being sharp.  I sometimes wish I were, well, dull... not so sharp.  Not so attuned to things.  Just drifting along, happy and content, enjoying life's mediocrities.

And sometimes I do just that.  But it doesn't sit well with me for long.  Soon it seems I'm just languishing in things not worthwhile, things not worth spending my time.  I get bored with boredom, I suppose, and I seek more interesting things.

Boredom wears down sharp people, makes them duller; thus sharpness grows duller with time.  But dullness is steady and ongoing.  The dull never seem to tire of being dull and bored.

Maybe boredom doesn't bore them.  Perhaps boredom, when you're dull, is like a long, interesting movie that you sit and watch and eat your popcorn and enjoy.

I know time will do its thing and my sharpness will become duller and duller with each passing year.  So maybe I'll grow more and more content.  That would be just fine because, as Neil Innes once sang: "How sweet to be an idiot."

5 comments:

  1. This was interesting. My mother, who just turned 85, is as sharp and witty as ever. She's always been that way and it hasn't dulled over time. In fact, in some ways it's grown sharper. So maybe it's just keeping up the interest in life...exploring new things...being open to possibilities that keeps us from getting dull or boring. They say ignorance is bliss...but I wonder sometimes...

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  2. Maybe the ignorant just THINK they're happy?

    (Of course, then perhaps they really are)

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  3. i dont know i tend to agree with talon...i have seen both and it seems to be those that stay involved that stay sharp

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  4. I guess that may be right.

    After all, even a pencil needs to stay sharp.

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  5. I wise person once told me, "Only boring people get bored"

    I agree.

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