Intelligence

Or

Nothing ever happens on a Thursday.

I was sitting in a schoolroom close to the main entrance of my school. It was a Religious Education themed room called E2. Four rows of desks on the left side, six seats on each row, two rows of four seats on the right. I was in the second row from the front, three seats in on the left side. I was in year 8. That was my favourite room in the school, apart from the Headmaster’s office. It was the first place I ever meditated. It was where one of my favourite teachers could always be found, until he left three years later. He was a Northern Irish raconteur who’d apparently met everyone; many didn’t, but I believed him. He travelled to war torn countries, listened to music that wasn’t in charts and had never entered it, said things no one else at school ever had and taught me many thing that have never been included on a school curriculum. He once took an essay of mine I was especially proud of to the Headmaster who read sections of it out in assembly to the 1000+ boys of my school.

I was sitting in a schoolroom close to the main entrance of my school and I was staring at a poster on the wall. One of many posters which covered every topic and subject matter and source from Donald Rumsfield quotes (“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.”) to the Wheel of Life. The poster I was looking at was a cheap, dusty, laminated piece of white A4 which had tasteless WordArts in a circle surrounding a title “The Seven Intelligences”.

I was sitting in a schoolroom close to the main entrance of my school and I was staring at a poster on the wall and everyone else was doing the work I’d already finished. Mr Clements, one of my favourite teachers, with his Northern Irish twang, asked me what I was looking at. I told him. He asked me what I thought about the poster. I can’t remember the exact answer I gave but I remember the short conversation we had about it with the class. How he explained that the Seven Intelligences came from a man called Gardner and what they meant. We deciphered that it ranged from Emotional Intelligence to Body and Sport Intelligence to Maths Intelligence to Language Intelligence to Musical Intelligence to Confidence Intelligence.

All of these are connected and very few people have no Intelligence in one area. This isn’t a well done me post but I think I’m doing pretty well in all of them.
Body and Sport: I juggle 3 clubs, 4 balls and am learning (slowly) 5 balls. I don’t do it badly. I’m not the best at it but I enjoy it.
Maths Intelligence: I’ve got an AS in Maths. It may not be a high one, but I can certainly get by.
Musical Intelligence: I sing, I play guitar and ukulele and used to play the trumpet. I busk moderately successfully. I play gigs I get paid for and open mic nights. I’m in no way the best but I enjoy it and I usually get positive comments about it from others.
Confidence Intelligence: I’m not shy. I’m very easy to get to know and I’m social and I stood for election for a place on the Law Society Committee at my uni and got the position I was aiming for.
Language Intelligence: I am, as I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, a bit of a writer. I wrote a story on a website that’s got almost 12,000 views and 40 high ratings (average of 4.72 out of 5). I’m a grammar and spelling fiend (although even I make mistakes occasionally, so leave me be).
Emotional Intelligence. I left this one last as there’s no measurement. We may have a moral compass, but there’s no moral ruler. There’s no quantification of how a conversation or a hug can affect those around us. Nor should there be. I was thinking about selfless acts whilst on the bus three days ago. I knew there was no such thing, but I didn’t know why. Then it struck me. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s third law of motion. I don’t actually think that the contented smile that passes across one’s face and warm feeling after donating a bag of clothes to charity is either equal or opposite, but it’s a reaction. Some may say that the reaction is so minimal in comparison to the action that it cannot be regarded but I disagree. If it’s there for all to see or notice, it exists. Without Selfless acts, we cannot try and measure how emotionally intelligent someone is as their motives could have kinds of reprehensible qualities, from hedonism to spite to idleness.

Emotional Intelligence was why I started writing this. I read an online advice column every week called Dear Sugar. She posts on E-zine called the Rumpus which I found a through a variety of writers who post almost solely on the internet. I love reading Dear Sugar. The questions are real, earthy, painful, grief-stricken, honest and in desperate need of answers. The answers are inspirational, jaw-dropping, filled with love and attention and passion and diligence, personal and wise. Sugar manages to write an advice column the same way that Jeff Buckley wrote a music. That knowledge of what she’s talking about, the experience that sings out through her words is what makes it. Nobody can walk through the world without experiencing grief. Nobody should either. It’s what makes us worthy of all around us. I haven’t experienced a lot of grief and suffering in my life. There’s been some obviously, but my emotional education has not come directly from the school of hard knocks. Instead I’ve had an Etonian-esque tutoring from my friends and family.

I didn’t need to go through that pain and suffering to get the lessons that others have. My mother used to be the manager of a Women’s Hostel. That’s a place where women who’ve experienced domestic abuse can escape to with their children. I wasn’t even a pubescent teenager when my mother finally stopped working there but through her experiences I’ve managed to take titbits of information. Tiny morsels of moral guidance. Iotas of guidance after meeting those women and thier children. Thinking about my entire Emotional Intelligence, I owe 70% directly to my mother. Of the other 30% I would think that 20%, she directly overlooked and encouraged. Things like reading certain books like the Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi or To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
Reading Dear Sugar would fall into my own ‘unsupervised study’ but it’s only through the Emotional Intelligence I already possess that means that I can understand the depth, brevity and power of her writing to mean that even on a Thursday night I almost cried.

And everyone knows nothing ever happens on a Thursday.