To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Friday, May 24, 2019
 

It’s not every day that I say this…but I feel immensely happy today after something transpired that I did not hope for but has made all the difference to my state of mind. I have always believed that having the same intellectual wavelength is important in any kind of relationship, personal or professional. However, I did not understand well enough until I was placed in a rather difficult position how little intellectual wavelength matters when the values-orientation is not similar or the opposite. I realise now that for there to be some sort of affinity of spirit with a person the values-orientation matters probably much more than intellectual orientation, but then again, to have a certain sophisticated sense of values you do need a certain sophistication of mind as well. So maybe what I am really saying is that intellectual compatibility is a necessary but not sufficient condition for affinity but the right values-orientation means that there is both. This is an interesting thing to think about to say the least…
 
We generally hear that Emotional Intelligence or Quotient is as important or more important than Intelligence Quotient. Though Emotional Intelligence seems to cover some of the stuff that may be understood as values such as say empathy, I don’t think it is quite the same thing. For example, it doesn’t cover one’s ethical views. I would think something like a Values Quotient—though I would not use the word ‘quotient’ except that in this instance it conveys what I am aiming at—is more important for me than IQ or EQ because to have a VQ would mean that one has a certain type of IQ and a certain type of EQ as well. It might seem odd that I assume a VQ includes an IQ but the values-orientation I am talking about here is not a blind ‘rules of behaviour’ but deliberate reasoning or critical/analytical application in terms of what one must do or what is the right thing to do in a particular situation. To do this well you certainly need wisdom (which is why I say it is a type of IQ which goes beyond say numerical proficiency) and you also need an emotional sense (which probably again gets covered in the type of wisdom I am referring to).
 
So coming back to why I am happy… not going into specifics suffice to say that I feel good when I get to be around people with compatible VQ :) … this is a topic that I will keep coming back to am sure as you shall see…

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 3:38 pm 2 comments
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