I have one friend who I consider fiercely intelligent. One. I have met other very intelligent people occasionally, each one unique. But this guy is a problem. He chews the head off of your argument before you have finished the first sentence, and you many not understand it, but he is correct to do so. His perspectives are so clear, and so unlike anything I have ever heard humans thinking or doing that, in many cases, it required 4-6 -years- of talking to him on a topic before I could even -start to simulate his position-, let alone understand it.

He is, in many ways, so far ahead of me that he might as well belong to another species. But he is also, in some ways, far more gentle than I am. He takes his time. It’s the long con against human stupidity, in his case, and I play the short con. The man has been a terror in my heart, mind, and life. And precisely because of that he is perhaps one of two human beings I have been able to learn as much from as I do from nature and culture. But what I want to say is this. Find someone so far beyond your abilities and understandings that they seem alien. Sit at their knee. Discover their mind. For this is the ancient way, and in this way, the one who plays student is as much the teacher as the one who plays teacher.

When I first met this person, I thought he was ignorant and closed-minded because he refused to entertain my (actually very naive in some cases) metaphysical models of divinity, history, language, intellect, and thought. In fact, I considered him arrogant, ignorant, and far too sure of his positions and perspectives. I was catastrophically mistaken. It took -years- to discover this. Had I simply gone with my initial judgment I would definitely have simply walked away, shaking my head — and missed the most important human teacher in my entire life.

But my exposure to him has a hidden benefit: I have radically advanced positions of his -that he could not advance-. In acting as a kind of ‘satellite’ of his intelligence, and he of mine, we have both been party to sudden leaps of understanding and intelligence that become, over time, not merely arbitrary, but rhythmic, then cascades of advancement that became almost musical in their common and familiar intervals. We learn like tall grass grows. In seasons, leaps, and flights. Like nothing I have ever seen or imagined. And not because we’re paid, or religious. Because we are too desperately curious and passionate to release the questions and dreams we so adore. Together.