Smart
Smart
— Matthew D. Lyons
When I was young,
I thought I was dumb.
Not dramatically.
Not with a speech prepared.
Just quietly,
the way a child learns
to lower his eyes
before anyone asks him to.
School arrived quickly.
Math moved like a train
I was always chasing.
Science spoke in a language
that seemed to belong
to other children.
The answer was already on the board
before I had found the door
to the question.
At home,
concern gathered around me
in the shape of sighs,
silence,
correction.
My dad,
never one to soften a blade
before handing it over,
once said,
I think the only reason you have a brain
is to keep your ears from snapping together.
And somewhere inside me,
a boy heard the laugh
before he understood the wound.
Another time:
Engage your brain
before you open your mouth.
As if my mouth
were a loose animal.
As if my mind
had wandered off again
without permission.
What I didn’t know then
was that I had been tested.
That strangers with pencils
and serious faces
had measured something in me
and called it high.
Off the charts, even.
I was never told about the test or the results.
Which only made the mystery worse.
If I was smart,
why did I feel so slow?
If I was gifted,
why did everything feel
like a door that opened
for everyone else first?
If there was a light in me,
why did so many people
stand around it
complaining about the switch?
Eventually,
something came on.
Not all at once.
No lightning.
No choir.
No sudden genius
walking down the stairs
in a new suit.
More like a lamp
left on in a back room.
More like dawn
taking its time
with the windows.
I learned how to think.
Then I learned
I could think quickly.
Then I learned
that quickness
could be mistaken for safety.
A boy who was called slow
may spend the rest of his life
arriving early
just to prove
he was never lost.
And now,
a week from sixty,
I can admit this:
I have sometimes made
an altar of my intelligence.
A quiet one.
No candles.
No incense.
Nothing obvious enough
to call idolatry.
Just the private satisfaction
of catching the mistake.
The small inward smirk
when someone misses the point.
The little courtroom in my mind
where I am judge,
witness,
prosecutor,
and the only one
who knows how the law works.
I have mistaken insight
for innocence.
I have confused analysis
with wisdom.
I have believed
that if I could name the pattern,
I was free of it.
If I could explain the wound,
I had healed it.
If I could understand the fire,
I would not be burned.
But the mind,
for all its beauty,
is not a body.
It can circle grief
for years
without ever touching it.
It can build a ladder
out of language
and still refuse
to climb down
into the heart.
It can turn faith
into an argument,
love into a theory,
suffering into a diagram,
God into a concept
it can approve or dismiss
depending on the day.
I have used my intelligence
to outrun other people.
Worse,
I have used it
to outrun myself.
The part of me that aches.
The part that does not need
a better explanation.
The part that only wants
a hand on the chest
and someone to say,
I know.
I know.
You do not have to solve this
to be held.
This is the humility
I am learning late in life:
that being smart
did not save me
from being human.
That the heart
doesn’t open
because I have mastered
the vocabulary of opening.
That presence
cannot be researched
into being.
That a life
cannot be lived
entirely from the forehead.
There is intelligence
in the body, too.
In the breath
when it trembles
and stays.
In the belly
when it tightens
before the mind
finds the reason.
In the tears
that arrive
without asking
whether the timing is convenient.
In the hands
that know how to reach
before the mouth
knows what to say.
Maybe wisdom
is not the mind
finally winning.
Maybe wisdom
is the mind
bowing.
Not disappearing.
Not being shamed
for its brilliance.
Just bowing.
Taking its seat
among the other holy instruments.
Beside the heart.
Beside the gut.
Beside the skin.
Beside the little boy
who thought he was dumb
because the world
kept asking him questions
in the wrong language.
I want to tell him now:
You were never stupid.
You were listening
from somewhere deeper
than they knew how to test.
And I want to tell the man
who became proud
of being smart:
You are safe enough
to be simple now.
Safe enough
to not know.
Safe enough
to be corrected.
Safe enough
to be ordinary
in the presence of another person’s truth.
Safe enough
to stop turning every room
into a measure
of your mind.
There is nothing wrong
with your brain.
It has carried you far.
It kept your ears
from snapping together.
It kept your sorrow
from swallowing you whole.
It built bridges
where no one taught you
how to cross.
But now,
beloved mind,
rest.
There is a heart here,
still waiting
to be consulted.
There is a body here,
still telling the truth
without footnotes.
There is a life here,
not asking to be figured out,
only entered.
And maybe,
after all these years,
smart is not the highest praise.
Maybe the blessing is softer.
To be open.
To be kind.
To be teachable.
To be brave enough
to feel
what I can no longer afford
to merely understand.