My ass may be dumb...

Someone asked me the other day: Do you think you're smart? Not in a derisive manner, but posed as an honest question. My retort was a bit dismissive: My ass may be dumb, but I ain't no dumb ass (Courtesy of Quentin Tarantino via Elmore Leonard). However, in all honesty it got me to thinking. Do I really think I'm smart? Far from it. The only thing I know is that I know nothing, and that everyday is an adventure to find just a semblance of truth to what we, as a society, have allowed ourselves to become as individuals. You work a shit job, fine. You have friends who you drink and shoot the shit with, fine. Yet, through all the mundane and trivial trials of life, we've forgotten that which made us great as kids. To be curious, to not just seek an answer, but to understand why that answer is so. What is the truth? After all is knowledge not a reflection of that which we find to be true? Is not a hypothesis a query that allows for experiments to reflect that which is true? As we age, there is no quest to learn. We're too tired. We're too busy. We're too into something. Even the simplest of moments become jobs: eating, brushing your teeth, driving to work. A tribulation laced with no enjoyment as there is no quest to learn from it, only to get it done. The days crawled by when we were kids, yet now, even the dreariest and monotonous of days fly right by. We have fooled ourselves into thinking that there is nothing left to explore. When I see my nieces, all I see are quests for truth and knowledge. When she asks me if I'm joking with her, that is her quest to find the truth. 10 years from now, there will be no messing with her, for those moments of her trying to find out what I mean will be gone. Instead it will be on to the next text message, are on to the next DVR'd show. For now, it's the little truths and ideas that will compound themselves, letting her put aside the small realities and move on to the even bigger ones. A quest, that I myself need to remember. For truth, is my niece asking me if I know how to play UNO. And truth is my sister sitting in my dirty ass room for a half hour shooting the shit the day after I've had surgery. And truth is my ma, asking me when I'm gonna get married so that she can retire. Now if there is no knowledge to be found in that, then there is no point in dissecting a film, or underlining your favorite passage in that novel...cause if we don't stop to understand the little things, then the knowledge we gain is only half-assed. Almost as half-assed as asking the question: Do you think you're smart?