{Be Loved } Intelligence
by: Emily Bell
I was never a good student. Ever. It embarrasses me to write this. I always wanted to a good student, but somehow school and I never connected. I was always just barely passing. Apparently I “needed to apply” myself or something, I don’t know I wasn’t paying attention. ;) When I got into higher education I am not going to lie, I was scared I would never graduate. So when I took a music class in college and our first assignment was to write a one page paper on the definition of music I was more than a little nervous.
Now, being artsy fartsy, as I am learning I am, I tackled this essay from the only angle I knew to. My right brain. I could have talked about music being a series of measures pushed together to create a piece. Rests, whole notes, half notes, staccato, crescendos, treble clef, 4/4 counts. But as I started to write I made a realization that music is all around us all the time. The sound of a baby cooing. Birds in trees covering us with an umbrella of their talent. Remembering my parents low voices in the car. Their conversation floating to the back seat where my brother I pretended to sleep, the only clear sounds being the ‘s’ at the beginning and end of each word . The sound of a child’s laugh. Bacon sizzling in a hot pan.
This is what I wrote about. And honestly I expected the teacher to blow it off with a note saying, “See me.” I imagined walking into his office and he would strongly suggest I drop his class until I had some solid music foundations under my belt. And to please stop with the overly poetic ideas.
… But, being the artsy fartsy teacher he was and the fact he used his right brain to tackle the grading of the papers, He read my paper aloud! What? Are you kidding me? Those are my words he is reading! I got a little embarrassed and a lot proud. I grasped what he was trying to get the whole class to understand. I GOT IT! ME!
I was floored! Could I actually be successful in college? Did I actually have an intelligence others didn’t have? Did I really have worth in the academic world? This was all new to me. I would love to go on and tell you college was a breeze for me. That I sailed through every class with clarity, focus and a string of A’s. That didn’t happen. College was a marathon for me. It was putting my head down and struggling through the math, chemistry and writing intensive courses. Occasionally I would have a class where the right brain was praised. I lived for those classes.
As the years have ticked by I have figured out I have a certain intelligence others don’t have. And there are many others who have intelligence I don’t have. I don’t care who you are. You are intelligent. You might be physically intelligent like my son. At the age of 2 he could balance on anything. It didn’t matter how high up it was or how it wobbled. He could balance on it. But he didn’t say a word until he was almost 2 and a half. You might be intelligent at reading people’s emotions like my daughter. One glance in your direction and she can feel your hurts. Trying to hide it doesn’t work. She then comes along side of you and speaks kind words. Her words are like neosporin for the soul. She’s 7! How can a 7 year old do that? But, she struggles desperately with reading.
In our world we need all of our intelligences working together. Celebrate your intelligence! Celebrate other’s intelligence! Right now I am celebrating whoever created spell check because I have misspelled intelligence about 85% of this post. (Not kidding.) We all need to support and celebrate each other. Be it spell check, your doctor’s keen knowledge of the body, a child’s ability to read your emotions, a fire fighter whose body can quickly hop through a burning home to rescue someone, a designer able to create a stunning room, a well written song with words speaking strait to your heart, an excel spreadsheet with well organized sections and mathematical formulas in each row, a blog post about intelligence, we are all intelligent.
You are intelligent. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what disabilities you may have. I don’t care what your teachers may have said to you. I don’t care what you even believe about yourself. You are intelligent.
Today I celebrate your intelligence and I will celebrate mine as well. Cheers to all the wonderful ways we were each made.
Love From Albany, OR
Em
