Expert on Stupidity

When Cornelia and I moved to Rotterdam we rented an apartment that was unfurnished. We brought from Romania an inflatable mattress which we used as a bed for a couple of weeks. We bought some furniture in the first days of our staying here, but we didn’t find a bed. Finally we found one at a second hand furniture store and we bought it, but it had no mattress, so we had to find one that was comfortable enough (I have some problems with my back so I need a good mattress) and at a price that we could afford.
.
In the spring of 2010 I bought a mattress in Bucharest and I knew what to look for. Also, by having this experience I knew that it was not easy to find something good at a reasonable price. Some mattresses cost around 1000 euros. Anyhow, I had some experience in buying furniture and especially mattresses and I comforted Cornelia who was a little scared of the process of finding something that is ok and we have to use for the next 2 years (at least) and is very important for one’s overall well-being. She could rely on me. Now I confess that I was pretty much in her situation, but I just didn’t show it, not to scare her more.
.
We found a mattress store really close to where we live in Rotterdam. We went there and looked around. The salesman asked us if we were interested in something particular and we said that we are looking for a mattress with the dimensions of … and a maximum price. The gentleman showed us one and invited Cornelia to try it. She said that I should try it because “I’m the expert” (I told you that I had some experience, but for sure I’m not an expert).
.
The salesman replied: “Miss, we are all experts in sleep. We all do it every day for eight hours all our lives.”
.
The truth is that he’s right. We all have a tremendous amount of experience and practice with sleeping.
.
Then I wandered if there aren’t other things in which we are all experts in. A quick and easy answer is related to other things that we do on a daily basis and are linked to our primary biological needs. But this is not interesting. Of course we take for granted that we do some things every day and we get better at doing them, but using the toilet or showering (I hope that most of my readers shower on a daily basis) aren’t interesting fields.
.
A less easy, but nonetheless true, answer is stupidity. We all do stupid things. Even the smartest people do things that are less rational, sub-optimal or plainly stupid. Doing stupid things doesn’t necessarily imply that the person who does them is stupid. The other way around we can say that not everything that a stupid person does is necessarily stupid.
.
There is a lot of literature on irrational or less-rational behavior that is extremely interesting (at least for me), but to understand the fact that people generally do stupid things one only has to look around and start using the frontal-left part of his or her brain (the area responsible for reasoning). Of course, other people do stupid things on a regular basis. You and I are not doing such dumb things. Most people say: “I’m too smart to do that. It’s the others who do them.”
.
Even this very line of reasoning is not that rational. Everyone thinks of his or her self being above average, being a smart person, a good driver, a good lover etc. And in most of the times it’s really good that we think like that. Who would want to think bad about him(her) self and be depressed all the time?
.
But in the same time, we have to realize that it is not always so. We are not “above average” lovers, drivers, cooks etc. We have to realize that each of us does, more or less often, stupid things.
.
We have to admit that we are all experts on stupidity, even if we aren’t always aware of that.
.
Shout it out loud! “I’m an expert on stupidity!!!”