How stupid can I have been? Stupider, I hope.

For years I've told my kids: if you don't look back on what you've done a few years back and think that a bunch of the things that you did are incredibly stupid, then you haven't learned much in the meantime. It's painful to see that what you've done is stupid. But it's a sign of growth.

Whenever I've finally found a way to get past some big psychological problem--one of the ones I've wrestled with for years--the very last thing that I always have to deal with is this: I realize that all the suffering that I've experienced and all the suffering I've caused others because of whatever-it-had-been had been unnecessary. Entirely unnecessary. Nothing had ever prevented me from getting past that particular problem but my own ignorance and my own stupidity. And since the source of my ignorance--about these kinds of issues--was always also result of my own stupidity, then everything bad that had happened for years and years was due to two things: me, and my stupidity.

It's was always painful to recognize that I was the cause of all that suffering. It was agonizing to recognize that it was because I was stupid. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! I hated knowing I had been stupid. And I hated knowing that the reason that I had been stupid was that I was too stupid to realize how stupid I'd been.

So why didn't I take those two well-known patterns, put two and two together and gotten something between 3.999 and 4.001? Easy. I was stupid.

Today, in a session with Mitchell, the IFS therapist I've been going to I finally added it up. And I got 4. Props for him for guiding me through the hardest job of facing my own past stupidity I can remember. It was stupidity all the way down. And this post is to keep me from stupidly forgetting what I've so painfully learned.

It should have been obvious that the only way for me to ever become wise would be to realize exactly where in the past I had been stupid. There isn't even a choice. It's math!

The only way to solve that kind of long-standing-problem is to realize that the answer has been there, all the time, and I had been too stupid to see it.

The only way for me to grow in understanding has to be to face my own prior ignorance. The price of wisdom is the price of recognizing my own past stupidity.

The more I gain knowledge the more I have to face my past stupidity.

YMMV, but that's my story.

No one likes to feel stupid--which is why it's tough for me to take criticism, why I confirm my biases, why I don't like to think about how ignorant and stupid I still am. That's me, anyway. Maybe you're different. Maybe you're comfortable taking criticism, questioning your assumptions, and realizing that against a background of perfect knowledge and perfect rationality based on that perfect knowledge, that you must inevitably be ignorant and stupid.

Or maybe you're too stupid to consider that possibility and the possibility that you're too stupid to see it.

Or maybe I'm being too hard on you. Just because I'm an asshole. I don't know about you, but I do know about me.

Today, I realized how stupid I was to not see that the path to knowledge leads through the realization of stupidity.

Today, I realized how hard I had worked to avoid feeling stupid. It was easier to struggle with some of my problems than admit that the reason that I had those problems was simply and only that I was too stupid to let go.

So bring on the stupidity! I've already started looking for other places where I'm being stupid. It wasn't hard to find them. And I found a couple that were ridiculously easy to fix.

Why don't I write like I'm running out of time? Stupid. Why does it take me so long to write posts for a blog that almost no one reads but me? Stupid. Why have I struggled so long and hard and unsuccessfully to change those habits? No reason, other than the desire to believe there are deeper reasons than simply: "That's stupid. Change it."

But that means...I could have changed it any time.

And that means the only reason I didn't change it was that I was actively being stupid.

Right.

If you know things that I am doing that you think are stupid, by all means, point it out to me. If I seem to resist hearing you out, then remind me of this post.

I will appreciate your efforts.

Unless, of course, I'm being stupid again.