Recently my grandson asked me how I got to be so smart. I told him that it was because I was old and had lived a life full of experiences just like the one we had just been through. Afterwards I began to think about how I viewed myself and others on this subject.
When I was a child growing up in grade school, I took tests which indicated that I had a high level of intelligence and was placed into a "gifted" program in our school system. I was moved from my neighborhood school and bused to another school and grouped into classes who had been identified the same way. This is where I had my first experiences with integration and discrimination. Among this group that I spent time with during the day I wasn't considered to be that intelligent or even smart compared to others. When I left that world and went back to my world I was still at the top of the class in the hood. I also had to develop what was called street smarts if I was to survive.
As I grew older, I was able to use both my intelligence and smarts to advance. A few years of college to acquire additional book learning then on to the military for some new-life experiences. Even in the military I was able to use my intelligence to get assigned as a Chinese voice specialist and was sent to school in Texas and California to learn the language and put it to use tracking Chinese flight activities while stationed in Japan.
After my time in the Air Force, it was back home to the real world. I secured a job with a tobacco company and spent over twenty years starting from an entry level retail salesman to becoming the first African American Area Vice President. During this career I met many intelligent people who had natural cognitive capacity, problem solving skills, and knowledge acquisition. I tried to learn from all of them. There were others who I saw like myself that were focused more on the practical, social, and the ability to work with others and adapt to various situations. While intelligence is something that may be innate and obtained through education, genetics, environment, and is applied in an academic or theoretical context. Being smart is often cultivated through practical experiences, social interactions, observations and decision making in changing situations.
After being given early retirement from B&W Tobacco I moved on to be VP of Sales for the Kentucky Lottery, where I was able to transfer the experiences and skills I had learned to a new career. In this job I again meet many intelligent people. I also came to realize that many of these people could come up with many ideas, but it was always left up to me to get them implemented. On many occasions there would be a clash between what could successfully be done in a smart way in the environment, and the ideas put forward. This happens over and over in the world we live in today.
There may be intelligent people in our government. There are others that have experiences, but they are do not match those needed for the job and are not even intelligent. It is hard to watch intelligent and people with experience being fired or replaced by people who are just loyal to a party or person no matter what. Our President is an example of a person whom many people think is successful because he is intelligent. I don't think that is the case at all. He is smart, since he has been able to take the lessons he learned from his father, and people like Roy Cohen & Roger Stone to get things from others to his benefit, including the American people. As a street-smart businessman, he has been able to lie and con people all the way to the most prestigious position in the country. His knowledge of the constitution, government, and the lives of the majority of Americans is limited at best. He will do and say whatever he needs too, to enrich himself, with no real moral or ethical compass.
At the end of the day, I believe I have some innate level of intelligence which fairly high, and over the years have become smart due having experienced a lot of situations over 75 years. My goal though is a "wise" man. To be able to use my knowledge and experience to make sound judgements and decisions, knowing that I cannot control the action of other, but only my own. To have understanding, insight and be able to see beneath the surface of things. To make decisions that are ethical and assess situations understanding the consequences. I want to be able to navigate life's complexities with understanding, empathy, in a way that reduces stress in my life and others.
