My Intelligence is for Lease
Discomfort is necessary to support an intellectual home. Before I, or anyone can find
what works, there needs to be failure, and for a clear idea of what works to exist, it’s equally true that what doesn’t work needs to be present. Salvatore Scibona’s “Where I Learned To Read” and Sherman Alexie’s “Superman and Me”, there are subliminal and abstract examples of how lack can lead to fulfillment.
In the first story, we meet a young boy who learns to read in the discomfort of his home. Him and his family live on a reservation, which we’re not given much context for but it’s not out of the ordinary to imagine that this indicates an uncomfortable lifestyle. He learns to read by making connections between the illustrations of his comic books and the words written in the text bubbles. While this is impressive and heartfelt, I imagine that there is a reason why a young boy was so lost in a book, seeking for understanding instead of enjoying it in passing.
In that little boy, I see me. I see 12 years old me butchering the lyrics to trending songs on the radio and making out one word of the sounds I heard that made no sense to me. I see myself watching Disney Channel and Nickelodeon shows, completely understanding situations because of the body language, and being able to recognize what words meant something would happen. And finally, I see myself— being transferred to an American school even when I spoke no English because my parents knew I would figure it out and that it’d be better for my future. Children are easily consumed by any form of storytelling because of the hunger to understand that they all carry. His intellectual home is reading and letting himself be carried by a story. In real life, this can present itself as learning best by consuming large amounts of information and creating concepts that help you grasp it independently.
In Scibona’s story, I see discomfort in direct form. There is apparent discomfort in his working situation, and according to this sentence; “I did my best to flunk out of high school. I failed English literature, American literature, Spanish, precalculus, chemistry, physics” (Scibona 1) school was definitely not a safe place for him either. He hated his job too: “I loved that job the way a dog loves a carcass in a ditch”. These high levels of discomfort must be carried out by something that ties it all together: his intellectual home. The high level of passion that he ends up having for reading must be equal to the high level of discomfort that he experienced from what his life was filled with as well.
My intellectual homes are in direct relation to what it is that I’m consumed by at a certain moment in life. There needs to be something lacking, for me to find a method to get things right. My intelligence is for lease. It’s occupied by the substance of my lifestyle and occupied by the methods I find to be the most positive for me at that time.
