Super Stupid

At some point in our lives it’s time to put up our childish ways and grow the hell up, or in other words, to mature in our thinking and in our actions. There are a lot of factors that can affect one’s maturation process like social and economic backgrounds, education and family history, but there’s this little thing called common sense that is often not too common at all. The lack of common sense causes us to do some very stupid things.

Children are impulsive and don’t have much care about consequences; they want what they want and that’s it. They’ll do something and tell you that they don’t know why they did it they will even lie and place blame just to avoid being disciplined. My 5-year-old grandson loves superhero costumes and legos. When he doesn’t follow directions, or as we call it “having listening in his ears”, my daughter and son-in-love take away his privileges to play with his toys. Being the grandparent that I am, I thought that was kind of harsh at first. They once told him that they were going to cancel his birthday, and of course I wasn’t feeling that. My daughter politely responded they have to teach their son that there are consequences for disobeying his parents. I understood and realized that by taking away his toys they are teaching him at a level that a 5-year-old can understand. As he gets older, the lessons will be more age appropriate and prayerfully by the time he’s an adult he’ll be prepared for the time when he has to make good decisions on his own. When an person doesn’t get the guidance as a child to help him or her navigate through the decision-making process they become adults who ignorantly make childlike decisions and behave like one too.

An eighteenth-century English poet, Thomas Gray, wrote “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise.” This proverb suggests that not knowing something is often more comfortable than knowing it. I think there are certain situations that this may be true, for instance, discovering that your spouse had 10 sexual partners before you rather than the 5 they told you about. Learning of the 5 additional partners places no real harm or threat to your marriage, thus not knowing this information would be fine. It may make you a little uncomfortable knowing that your spouse told a stupid lie when they should’ve just been upfront with you from the beginning. On the other hand, knowing the truth about something that can be detrimental to your wellbeing or the wellbeing of others and pretending NOT to know is super stupid. This is true in cases where men had extramarital affairs, fathered a child and then kept it a secret or vice versa; women had extramarital affairs, got pregnant and then kept the identity of the real father a secret.

If a person has been taught the fundamentals of making good choices and yet refuses to do so; that is stupid. Refusing to grow up is equivalent to running on a hamster wheel forever. Simply going around and around revisiting the same situations, making the same bad choices and expecting different results. These people are not interested in seeking wise counsel because they are comfortable being stupid. More importantly, making a decision to get off the hamster wheel requires them to change their behavior; unfortunately they’re not willing to do the work. Change is very uncomfortable especially when it conflicts with the things that bring us pleasure and compromises our allegiance to certain friends and family members. Listen, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be better and do better, but there is something innately wrong when you don’t. Refusing to change and doing the same things over and over expecting different results is insanely super stupid.

A consequence to not making good choices is that you’ll reap what you’ve sown. You can’t plant tomato seeds and expect to harvest apples. The problem is that most of us seem to think that the harvest only applies to the good that we’ve sown, please understand that you will harvest the bad stuff too. The when’s and how’s are left up to the almighty Father. We just have to thank God that His grace and mercy saved us from receiving the full portion of what we KNOW we deserved. It’s super stupid to think that you can spend reckless energy digging ditches for others to fall into and avoid falling in one yourself. The best that you can do is to think more, react less, let go and let God.

Staying stuck on stupid isn’t a pretty sight. Your body will look a grown adult, but your mind will be developmentally delayed. All of the missed opportunities for growth will have you living a life all by yourself or with people that are significantly younger because you’ll lack the mental capacity to deal with people your own age. It’ll be like two people trying to have a conversation, but speaking different languages. I mean do you really want to be the old guy or girl still sitting at the kid’s table? Stop being super stupid!