The Sad Experience Highly Intelligent People With The Deepest Hearts Have In Common
Even though we suffer, we're never truly alone.
fizkes | Shutterstock An essential part of the human experience is looking inward and exploring how we feel. As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
While everyone’s level of intelligence differs, an emotional reality unifies the world’s smartest people. A quote from famed Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky highlights the emotional experience shared by the most intelligent people and has recently made the rounds on social media.
There’s a sad experience that highly intelligent people with the deepest hearts have in common.
Philosophy content creator Julian de Medeiros explained how to know if someone is intelligent based on a maxim from Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky.
In his epic novel, “Crime and Punishment,” Dostoevsky wrote, “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.”
Julian interpreted Dostoevsky’s words, declaring, “The greater the suffering, the greater the intelligence.”
“What he meant is that pain is a great teacher,” Julian explained. “It forces you to grow. It changes you.”
Psychologist James Webb explained the connection between high intelligence and existential depression, noting that gifted individuals have “a sensitive awareness and idealism that makes them more likely to ask themselves difficult questions about the nature and purpose of their lives and the lives of those around them.”
Webb pointed out that highly intelligent people are extremely attuned to the world and their place within it. He posited that people who are constantly posing questions, analyzing answers, and engaging in deep reflection lean toward rumination, or what he called “existential fretting.”
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Due to the experience of trying to understand themselves and the world around them, highly intelligent people often feel acutely alone and fall into an existential depression.
According to a 2015 research study, depression is the fourth leading cause of disability worldwide.
The study explored the link between depression and self-compassion. The researchers described self-compassion as maintaining “a healthy attitude toward oneself during times of struggle.”
They established that self-compassion has three key elements: The presence of self-kindness, a sense of common humanity, and mindfulness.
Self-kindness requires a person to be caring, understanding, and accepting of their own experience. It exists in contrast to self-judgment, which is a self-critical and harsh response to one’s emotions.
The researchers explained the concept of common humanity as recognizing that hardship and failure are a shared human experience, as opposed to an event that sets people apart from one another.
“This fosters a feeling of connectedness to others rather than leaving one feeling isolated and alone when in pain or suffering,” they wrote.
Dostoevsky’s words affirm the idea that intelligent people feel so deeply they often lose themselves in their suffering.
The end of Dostoevsky's quotation on the connection between suffering and intelligence proclaims, “The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
Taken in full, what he’s saying is quite profound: In our suffering, we’re united. In recognizing our common hardship, we find a common bond.
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Julien evaluated Dostoevsky's intellectual theory, saying, “Wisdom is simply the realization that we all suffer, and that, therefore, pain is what unites us, for it makes us realize that we are not alone.”
By virtue of being human, we’re bound to feel pain. So much of the world seems unmanageable and out of our individual control. Over the course of a lifetime, we experience a range of professional and personal failings. We lose sight of the dreams that once defined us. We lose people we love.
And still, we wake up as the sun rises and push onward because that’s how we make meaning in our lives.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture, and all things to do with the entertainment industry.