The view was majestic with dim greens that tarnished the landscape. A few million acres of land made my eyes dance inside my skull. The Toyota Corolla roared and bumped down the highway over worn potholes, taking us deeper into the desert. There were small, deforested pockets, burned and scarred from forest fires. It was a traveler’s paradise, a wasteland of overheat; the community thrived off of the heat. Mazzerati reached in the middle console, pulled out a fresh cigarette, and plopped it in his mouth. He borrowed a lighter from me, bent down and cupped his hands, and lit it.
The next morning we awoke and traveled to my house in Indian Wells, CA, where the weather is hot and the town is quiet. Mazzerati is in his early twenties and I’ve known him since I’ve known anybody. There are pictures of us on the mantle—young and resilient with our baseball caps on our heads.
Even as college wore on, when we had less and less to say to each other, we were still tied by a knot. We were stuck with each other, our attics full of old memories. His hair was short and red. He has the personality of a king salmon, always swimming to my rescue as the leader and unwilling to sacrifice his beliefs for his own satisfaction. He is brutally honest no matter the outcome.
The next night we were drinking some cold Bud Lights out of the can and moved outside to smoke a cigarette and talk about life. He swirled the beer can in one hand and took a puff from the Camel Filter in the other. I stood there gripping my beer with my smoke at my side.
“Try to ash it in the can,” I said.
He nodded.
“You know,” I said, “you, Jeremy, and William are the smartest friends I know. I wish I was as smart as you guys.”
“Look, there is an intrinsic nature of society that attempts to grasp this notion of normal—”
I interject, “Carry on.”
“Anything that deviates from this norm is then of course considered abnormal.”
“Okay,” I said.
He took another puff and exhaled. “Through its many mechanism THE SOCIETY either shuns the abnormal, or wraps its incredible might around them to reshape them in the likeness of its accepted norms.”
“What are you trying to say, man? Continue though. I’m intrigued.”
“There are some, like you Andrew, who grow up and have no idea what this process of social mechanisms is doing to you for a long time.”
“This sounds like me. Okay.”
“You can tell that something is pressing up against you, that somehow you’re not like everyone else, but can’t put your finger on it, which then causes you to unconsciously act out in even more aggressive ways, even more obnoxious ways.”
I nodded, still intrigued about what he was saying, trying to digest the sentence.
“Then you suffer from consequences, which then makes you desperate to try any solution you can that society has to offer for your so called disorder. Not your fault, that’s just how it is. What you realized after enduring that bull shit for years and years is ‘well, wait a minute what the hell am I doing this for?’ ”
“So this is where I wonder why they are giving this treatment, the Adderall?”
“Yes, you have told me multiple times you don’t even know who you are anymore.” He paused. “Look, many never really take the time and effort to do such a reflection on what’s going on with them and around them.”
“Really?” I said.
“Many just fall in line without knowing, they just live and try and do so in the specific way they’re SUPPOSE TO LIVE.”
I stood there and took a drag from my smoke and looked up at the sky and thought about what he said. Then he kept going. He was in the zone.
“But there are also many who do take the time and effort to see what’s really happening around them.”
“What do they see?” I asked.
“They see differences not as an abnormality but as an inevitable fact of human life.”
“What do they understand?”
“They understand what behavior will help them succeed and what behavior won’t help them, or what behavior is not worth their time to explore.”
“Wait so what about William and Jeremy?”
“These guys are the ones who recognize completely what is happening around them.”
“Meaning what? They recognize this and do nothing about it?”
“When it comes to socially proper behavior, even if they feel that a certain behavior or action is foolish, immoral, or against what they actually believe in, they will refuse to act based on their own justification, and instead they will act the way that will bring them the most social gratification.”
“Wait, so they know this but decide to keep doing it?”
“Yes, they even know sometimes that this is what they’re doing but don’t care, they care only for their own happiness, and this behavior gives it.”
“They think that standing up or confronting their own misconduct is a waste, that they are powerless to change the flow of the current. Understandably, too. It’s not easy to be a single fish swimming along with all the others and say, ‘Hey this is wrong I’m going against the current.’ They will in be trampled by all the others swimming. These people, if not checked by someone, or sometimes by themselves, will even convince themselves that the socially acceptable beliefs are their own, that they choose this persona.”
“William and Jeremy sacrifice their beliefs, they choose not to stand up as leaders to direct the fish swimming in the river to the right paths and instead follow in line. What they don’t understand is that if all the people like them stood up to this, there would be enough to change the flow of the fish. They also don’t see or don’t care to see that every time that they stand against the social machine they put a dent in it. Plus, they might even give someone else the courage to do the same. Then that person brings someone with them and exponentially this rebellion to the status quo grows and the chance to actually make a real difference for the greater good grows as well.”
So how does this relates to me?
I am looked at as not as smart as George, Jeremy, and William in society. But society is looking through a restricted lens, from one set of rules about the world. This lens and these rules even has me believing that I’m not as smart. But underneath it all, we all have intelligence and desirable qualities, and we all lack something. No one human has it all.