Know thyself.
I administered M an empathy quotient test, without telling him what it was for. He scored abysmally low, 18, far below half of my empathy score. The average man is a score of 42. The average woman scores 47. It all makes so much sense now. The good news is, empathy generally improves with age, and is somewhat flexible I believe, depending how we choose to live our lives.
I also have been sending a brain test to everyone I know, just for curiosity, because it showed my intelligence as being my strongest trait, off the chart, which made me wonder how far up that can measurably go, since this is the second diagnostic test that showed me as off the chart, and I'm not even sure why. At the risk of sounding arrogant, so far none of my friends show up with comparable intelligence, which maybe explains why I sometimes feel so alone in that regard, and receive only blank stares when I try to connect on all my niche topics of interest, and so I stopped initiating conversations altogether and withdrew deep into my own little world, like a true autist.
Of course, intelligence is hard to measure. There are so many different kinds of intelligence. What is intelligence even? Still, I'm relieved and somewhat surprised to see that my brain still apparently functions, despite all the ways I've attempted to numb it over the years with marijuana use and such, and all the dumb embarrassing mistakes I've made in times of stress.
Despite his low empathy score, M did score fairly high in intelligence, the highest yet of anyone I know, yet still below me. This validates how I feel about our relationship. In conversation, we are two peas in a pod, he matches my level of curiosity and we can converse fluidly and get quite excited when our thoughts play together. That's why I stay despite his hellish lack of empathy skills. I've always felt that way but now there are graphs to really see it visually, which is so fascinating.
Even at this stage of adulthood, there is still so much to learn about myself and others. Education potential seems infinite, and I crave to know everything about everything.
All these diagnostics make me want to take better care of my brain in general, to nurture and further develop what I've got, while I still can. Maybe it'll come in handy someday. It's confidence boosting too. (Especially after being verbally abused by my dad about my supposedly inferior intelligence, according to him.) We'll see how he does on the test, ha! I suspect he will not score high in intelligence, but I hope he surprises me and surpasses me instead. I always dreamed of having intellectual parents. They have their unique gifts and abilities to be sure, but "intellectual" isn't exactly how I'd characterize them, at least not in the bookish sense. But in other less obvious ways, perhaps. I'm so curious how my dad will score on the test! But I suspect he won't share his results with me, because that's just how he is. Dads, amirite?
This concludes today's incoherent rambles.
1:16 p.m. - 2022-09-14