Big Heart Big Brain Dance

I am latino ergo I dance. One of the few stereotypes I have embraced and helped propagate. Who wants to be the tipping point?

The dance is a ritual we learned from our days in the forest. Jumping and spinning, weaving and teasing the space with a rhythmic, primal instinct. We call it flirting now.

School has presented a number of challenges.
A small fish in a large pond - sometimes ocean. I'm the guppy here.
Everyone, EVERYONE was the valedictorian, captain of the soccer, basetball and basketball team, Model U.N. and mock Trial. The Halting problem was a 7th grade problem and orbitals were a cute joke discussed somewhere around the 9th grade. When they were in 10th grade they created A.I. sans Jude Law. Senior year rolled around and they organized the humanitarian campaign to save the world (project is still in the works - to join go to www.overachievers4eva.com).

Yes. It appears everyone is smart in my own little space of the planet. This protective cocoon of ivy walls untouched by ivy and appropriately tucked polos and sperm whaled seersucker shorts is my slice of heaven. Everyone is a cherub - brilliant, wearing golden sandals and sitting to the left or right of someone bigger than them.

And we all dance.

Street smart. Plain smart. Damn smart. Smart-ass. Smart.

Where is Mezrich when you need him to write a solid human interest piece on the unheard masses of nerds struggling to find the beat in the dance? Writing about oil futures probably or perhaps interning with a greater writer of nonfiction dribble.

Life as seen through the eyes of the genius. A long string of polynomials representing complications (deviating from the standard by <2*stddev). Passion completely removed. Cancelled out and subtracted. Better to double count on this one than risk leaving a residual claim on what our head tells us to do. Strip it down, parse the problem and solve for maximum efficiency. Everything is a puzzle to be solved. Even the poly chromatic sens-o-sketch our heart evokes every time we feel happy about the irrational. The normal call it spontaneity. We call it recklessness. I'm doing something because it makes me happy. Only after a careful cost-benefit analysis, an in-depth excel spreadsheet and a glance at the life plan.

To be bold. To let our heart rule over brain sometimes. To mix the illogical pleasures in life with a quantitative outlook on life. Teaching at Princeton and reading into pigeon waddling is something reserved for the unlucky and brilliant few.

This dance is modern. Developed with thought. The struggle is great and dealing with it should entail more than blue electric lady or cheap vodka labels or participating in the $10 a pill market. Should is an operative word.

How to deal? Thought. The very thing that put us in this messy situation.

Now think. Left, right, left, right.