It turns out ignorance is indeed a bliss. According to several studies, a person who has a higher IQ or a higher emotional intelligence quotient is more likely to have depressing thoughts and feelings of solitude. The cause is directly linked to the existence of a greater understanding of the world around them including empathy for those in peril. These intelligent individuals understand the construct of society and why it exists on a fundamental level. As a result, they lose interest in trivial things fairly quickly and need more and more challenging activities to cater to their curiosity. As this becomes increasingly difficult, they become dejected from the world and the people around them.
Additionally, the inability to find a suitable partner as well as friends who have similar interests or thought processes contributes to their feeling of being lonely in a big world. Extreme cases are savants who are exceptionally brilliant but can’t have even basic conversations with other people including their family members. Examples include Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Leonardo da Vinci, Alan Turing, Jane Austen, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Florence Nightingale whose excellence in one or many fields translated into a life full of troubled relationships and hardships.
In contrast, people who enjoy trivial things and extract happiness out of smallest of things are comparatively happier and satisfied with their life, even if they are not as intelligent as their fellow partners. Some characteristics -not symptoms because it’s not a disease- of highly intelligent people are:
- Perfectionist and borderline OCD
- Prefer to be Alone
- Inability to have steady and long-term relationships
- Overanalyse and Overthink simple issues
- Unable to find people who think like them
- Empathetic, Curious, Skeptic
- A tendency to stay up late at night coupled with Insomnia
In short, a jest to understand their place in the ever-expanding universe coupled with overthinking about the most basic of things -which ironically is the source of their brilliance- renders intelligent people onto a depressive state. So technically intelligence can be your downfall. However, the answer is in the question itself. Regardless of your personality and so-called intelligence quotient you will be happy if you are satisfied with yourself and find happiness in the most unlikely of places. So be satisfied, be happy, and don’t let your intelligence turn against you.
Suburban Wordsmith 