"The Joy of Being Stupid"
by Todd Hayen
"Yesterday I was engaged in my typical morning routine. Scanning the internet for interesting stories to read and news to soak in. Reading a few things here and there and watching a couple of videos. I settled in after a bit of this to write an article for my Substack “Shrew Views.”
The topic is unimportant - typically something to do with something that caught my fancy during my news scanning, or something someone said to me yesterday about whatever, all mixed in with my learned and experienced knowledge of archetypal psychology. Nothing earth-shattering, mind you, but hopefully an insight some people might find interesting, resonating with their own observations, maybe a bit funny, insightful, whatever. Who really cares.
I consider myself and my ideas interesting. Sometimes informative, sometimes insightful, and nearly always consciously honest and authentic. Not always “right,” mind you, that isn’t possible, of course, but always intended to be truthful. To be honest with you, I don’t really know why I write - at least I don’t know why I write publicly. (Or why I blog... - CP)
I just started doing it during the beginnings of the Covid koo-koo-fest, and it seemed a handful of people enjoyed (is that the right word?) what I was writing, so I kept doing it. I have written well over 500 articles as of today, and don’t plan to stop, although at times I have seriously considered it. (Me too! - CP)
I am not a particularly smart guy (as I am sure many of you would agree). And at times I believe I am quite stupid. But I do think my heart is in the right place. And I do believe that counts for something. To say it again, I am not very smart - certainly not compared to so many people I have run across in this weird journey since 2020.
I am again and again blown away by the people out there who are chock full of pertinent information - many of them seem to know nearly everything there is out there to know about a particular subject. And not only do they know what they know, but they are incredibly skillful at putting that knowledge together in such a way that their opinions, insights, and intellectual conclusions are mind-numbingly relevant.
These are impressive people: I admire them and am in awe of them. I’m not one of them.
Maybe you, who are reading this, are one of these people. Maybe not. Maybe you are more like me. Just a human being living on this planet in this strange time, trying to make some sense of what you are experiencing. Maybe you are terrified, maybe you are not. Maybe you are very sad and depressed, or maybe you are able to find joy in your life regardless of what you are seeing. Maybe you don’t even see it. Maybe you are stupid like me, maybe you are not. Whatever, it doesn’t really matter. More than likely, you are being called to do whatever you are doing. Whatever that is, whether it is significant or insignificant, you are doing it. So, to you at least, it matters.
But maybe you don’t agree. Does it really matter to you? I see many people every day in my psychotherapy practice who tell me that what they are doing in their lives doesn’t matter to them. They wonder why they are here, and they wonder what they are doing. They wonder if they matter at all. If I ask them what they think they are being called to do with their life, they just stare at me with a blank stare. “What? What do you mean by that?”
If you are being called, then who is calling you? I do believe our calling can be effectively covered up, and if we don’t make an effort to uncover it, we may never see it. But even if covered, as long as it is not pathologically obliterated, we will tend to move toward it. Call it intuition, call it an archetypal pull to allow creativity to express, call it divine inspiration, whatever it is, it usually will push through the junk and move you.
From my personal observation, most people do their best to ignore that push. They pay more attention to the calls of the flesh, satisfying the senses. They pay more attention to protecting the body and being as safe as they can possibly be. They are more apt to listen to and trust external forces claiming they will protect them from harm. Their own inner calling is ignored.
So, what does all this have to do with the joy of being stupid? Being smart or being stupid has nothing to do with anything. What we are called to do, does. Being “stupid” in the eyes of the world may actually be one of the last refuges of the free soul.
The smart ones - the credentialed, the data-drenched, the ones who can rattle off every study and counter-study—often end up paralyzed by their own sophistication. They see every angle until they see nothing at all. Meanwhile, the simple-hearted keep moving because something inside them says this matters, even if they can’t cite a single peer-reviewed paper to prove it.
I’ve come to suspect that the real division in our time isn’t between the informed and the ignorant, but between those still listening to an inner voice and those who have traded it for the louder, shinier, externally validated one. The former may look stupid to the latter.
They write Substacks instead of bestsellers, speak truth at dinner tables instead of on TED stages, refuse the jab, the mask, the narrative - not because they have a 400-page dossier, but because something in their chest simply says no. That quiet refusal is, in its own way, luminous.
So, I keep writing. Not because I’m brilliant, but because I’m called. The words arrive awkward and imperfect, yet they arrive. And every time someone messages me saying “this is exactly what I’ve been feeling but couldn’t articulate,” I remember: authenticity has its own intelligence. It cuts through the noise where IQ alone never could.
Maybe the deepest joy of being stupid is discovering that love, courage, and a stubborn commitment to what feels true are smarter than we ever needed to be. In a world engineered to make us feel inadequate, showing up as your uncredentialed, occasionally bewildered self, is a quiet act of rebellion." (Oh, this is SO familiar... -CP)
o
"We work in the dark. We do what we can to battle the evil that would otherwise destroy us. But if a man's character is his fate, it's not a choice but a calling. Sometimes the weight of this burden causes us to falter from the fragile fortress of our mind, allowing the monster without to turn within. We are left alone staring into the abyss, into the laughing face of madness."
- Fox Mulder, "X-Files"
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