An Inch Deep, A Mile Wide: On breadth, depth, and the quiet work of belonging

I’ve carried a quiet fear for most of my life: that I am not smart.

Not in the dramatic, “someone please reassure me” way. More like a low-grade hum that turns up the moment someone asks a question I didn’t anticipate. The question doesn’t even have to be hard. It just has to be unexpected. And suddenly I’m back in the old posture—pleasant face, quick brain, inner panic—trying to look like a person who absolutely has this under control.

The phrase I’ve used to describe myself is an inch deep and a mile wide.

I know just enough about a lot of things to get by. Sometimes I can sound like I know more than I do, because I’m good at picking up themes and speaking in a way that implies I’ve been living with the subject for years. I haven’t. But I can make it feel like I have.

Which means the impostor in me is always pacing in the hallway, clipboard in hand, waiting to burst into the room and shout, “Aha! Exhibit A: that time you used a five-syllable word and still didn’t know what you were talking about.”

For a while, I tried to make peace with this by calling it a strength.

Generalist. Quick study. Broad interests. A mind that connects dots.

And to be fair, it has been a strength. I can do a deep dive fast enough to speak cogently, and I can often translate complicated things into plain language. That served me well in my years as a lobbyist. Sometimes the job is basically this: read three memos, have two conversations, then walk into a room and speak as if you personally built the entire field with your own two hands.

I got pretty good at that.

The problem is my nervous system never got the memo that this was “fine.”

Because even when I was persuasive, something in me knew the difference between speaking well and knowing deeply. And I lived with the fear that someone else knew it too.

The Ethic I Inherited

I think I learned early that being smart mattered.

My parents frequently talked about the value of education and performing well. That’s not unusual. Most parents want their kids to have options and stability. But the way I absorbed it—because I heard it often enough, and because children are excellent little meaning-making machines—was less like encouragement and more like a standard I could fail.

Not, You’re capable.
More like, Don’t embarrass yourself.

So “smart” became less a quality and more a kind of social currency. And if you’re raised that way, knowledge stops being something you enjoy and starts being something you manage.

You don’t just learn. You prepare.

The Fear of Not Knowing

What did I fear would happen if someone saw me not knowing?

Rejection. Ridicule. Diminishment.

As if not knowing meant I’d be kicked out of the room—not literally, of course, but in the subtle social way that counts just as much. The raised eyebrow. The awkward pause. The internal note someone writes about you—one you never get to read but somehow always feel.

So I developed the skill of not being caught. Or, if I was caught, being caught in a way that still looked intentional.

I can see now how this fear created a muzzle I put on myself. Freedom of expression was not worth the risk. Better to stay slightly polished, slightly guarded, slightly vague. Better to offer a confident summary than a vulnerable question.

Which is a shame, because questions are where the oxygen is.

Breadth as Protection

I used breadth as social insurance.

Taking an interest in many things allowed me to be more acceptable in various circles. When the underlying fear was that I wouldn’t be wanted anywhere, knowing a little about many things gave me a chance of passing the initial test.

The we’ll let you stick around test.

If I knew enough about politics, books, music, religion, history—anything—I could find a conversational handhold. I could participate. I could appear conversant. I could buy myself time.

Being “a mile wide” is useful when you’re secretly afraid you’re not allowed to be a person unless you’re also impressive.

The Fantasy of Depth

Still, I craved the opposite.

I longed to be a mile deep and an inch wide—at least in some areas.

I admired and envied people who were subject-matter experts. I didn’t see them as myopic. I saw them as committed. Devoted. Rooted. People with the patience to stay with a subject long enough to understand it from the inside.

And because my mind is nothing if not efficient, I turned that admiration into an indictment.

“See? That’s what smart looks like.”
“See? That’s what real depth looks like.”
“See? You don’t have that.”

Some people collect stamps. I collect evidence against myself.

What I’d Grieve, What I’d Gain

Here’s the part I don’t love admitting:

If I stopped performing competence, I would grieve something.

I would grieve a certain pride in knowing a lot of random things. I would grieve the identity that says, I can hold my own anywhere. I would grieve the belief that this performance is what has opened doors for me socially and professionally.

Because it probably has.

But what I would gain by releasing performed competence—especially as I approach sixty—might finally be worth the trade.

Relief.

The relief of expectation. The relief of always being braced for the next question that might expose me. The relief of living less in “scan and manage” and more in “arrive and breathe.”

My nervous system would like to retire from being my full-time publicist.

Depth as a Permission Slip

Is my craving for depth actually a craving for belonging? For permission? For rest?

Yes.

A lot of my craving for depth is a craving for belonging—an intellectual permission slip to be allowed to take up space.

And I have to ask myself something that is both clarifying and mildly annoying:

Do I want depth because something genuinely captures my attention?

Or do I want depth because I believe depth will make me valuable?

Because those are two different pursuits. One is devotion. The other is costuming.

And I have worn enough costumes.

A Different Definition of Depth

At this stage in my life, I’m trying to release what doesn’t serve my nervous system.

So I’m experimenting with a gentler possibility:

Maybe my breadth has never been the problem.

Maybe the problem has been the story I attached to it—the story that breadth equals superficiality, and superficiality equals stupidity, and stupidity equals rejection.

Maybe the suffering isn’t that I’m a generalist.

Maybe the suffering is that I’ve been treating life like a pop quiz.

In Buddhist terms, this is familiar terrain: grasping and aversion. Grasping at the identity of “smart.” Aversion to the identity of “not smart.” A mind that measures, compares, ranks, and braces—and then calls that “self-improvement.”

What if the more radical practice is not becoming an expert, but becoming free?

Free to say, “I don’t know,” without collapse.

Free to be curious without performing.

Free to ask questions without shame.

Free to let a conversation be a conversation—not an audition.

What I’m Practicing Now

I’m not looking for a grand reinvention at sixty. I’m not trying to trade one identity costume for a more respectable one.

I’m trying to do something quieter, and—unfortunately—harder:

To stop auditioning.

To stop living as if every room is a courtroom and every question is cross-examination.

To stop confusing a regulated nervous system with a credible performance.

If depth arrives, I want it to arrive honestly—because something pulls me, because love sustains my attention, because devotion grows naturally when I stay close to what’s real.

And if breadth remains a true feature of how my mind works, I want to stop turning it into a verdict.

Because there is another kind of depth—one that doesn’t require mastery.

The depth of being human.
The depth of telling the truth.
The depth of being willing to be seen.
The depth of belonging to myself first.

If I’m going to be measured by anything now, let it be by how honestly I live.