Intelligence Is Not Enough

INTELLIGENCE IS NOT ENOUGH!

IN PRAISE OF WRITTEN REFLECTION by Dr. George F. Simons

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oday, whether we travel for business or pleasure, we tend to move at jet speed. We run to make connections and do whirlwind, if-this-is-Tuesday-it-must-be-Auckland tours. Many of us have breathless and unconscious everydays, commuting to and from work, ticking off the lists of people to be talked toand things to be done. We are often consumed by the questions and demands of others. The "quick trip" is itself a snapshot of what daily life is like. The traveler needs to come home and unpack, to haul the bulging suitcase in the house and heave it up on the bed, open it, take out the dirty laundry, hang things up, and put them where they belong. Sometimes this is the first good chance to look at the postcards and souvenirs and snapshots that tell us where we've been and what we've done. What's my life been all about since the last time I really came home to myself, to my beliefs, my values, my God, or my Ultimate Reality, and really unpacked? What valuable things have I picked up along the way? What's been lost or damaged or pilfered? What do I want to savor, taste, enjoy, share with others? What needs cleaning, shining, refilling, or renewal? Without unpacking there is no room for filling,, and, the unpacking itself may reveal the resources we need to journey onward. Most of us have journeyed long to be here. All of us are on a journey of one sort or another. We will be "going on" from here. When the founders of Mensa looked with almost missionary vision at the potential good to the world of gathering the highly intelligent in

fellowship, study, and comradeship, their values were showing. Mensa has no entrance requirements beyond a proof of intelligence, and that is good, because it creates a forum of those with different values, a rich mix of political right and left, an exciting variety of personalities, and a cross section from the well-to-do to the down-and-out....