Ben+L’s+Final+AmEx+2014+Speech


 * PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS. I wrote this as a speech, it is meant to be heard, not read; either watch the video on Vimeo when it comes out, or wait till i make the speech in class. **

**"All of us should realize that we are dumb" by Ben Limpich**

Every single person in this room, Wyatt, Kiley, Jason, Carlos, Jameson, myself and even Mr. Geib, is dumb.

Now the one thing I feel like I’m kinda known for, besides my very active hand gestures, is that I’m slightly smart, which sounds arrogant, but let me put into context. The only compliments I ever remember getting are the ones that complimented my intelligence, they are the ones that stuck with me, and they are always followed by me thinking “good god this person does not know how much stupid crap I’ve done”.

You see the only real thing I use to value was intelligence; when I’ve been called say “scrawny”, which has some merit admittedly, I didn’t really care too much because I didn’t place much value on aesthetic qualities or even to some extent even personal qualities like kindness. All I really cared about was whether people thought I was clever or not.

I got up on my pretentious soap box and felt intellectually superior because I knew some obscure fact about Russian economics, or had a subtle playful smirk on my face when someone asked me what my grade in History was, and I felt better about myself because people affirmed my fragilely constructed notion that I was intelligent.

Consequently the only times in high school I’ve felt really bad was when I felt like a moron, and now, ironically, I realize how stupid I was being.

My cliché mistake was that I cared way too much about what you all thought of me, and I know I’m not the only one who’s screwed up like this before.

Everyone here has made a wrong decision at some point in their life, maybe you stole the cookies from the cookie jar, maybe you said something about a friend that you shouldn’t have said, maybe you signed up for AP physics I don’t know, I know I have had my fair share of screw-ups, and we are all inevitably going to make more wrong decisions in the future, it would be unnatural if we didn’t, but instead of focusing on how we’re prone to expose our-flawed-selves, we need to remember that we are all human beings and that we all act like idiots sometimes.

Most of our founding fathers owned slaves, Gandhi left his father’s death bed to have sex with his 15 year old wife, Einstein married his first cousin, Socrates was a hobo who mooched off the Athenians, Stephen Hawking is addicted to gambling, Charles Dickens was a Social Darwinist, and Charles Darwin married his first cousin!

The point that I’m trying to convey is that the people that we think of as great intellectuals have their own flaws and their own set of mistakes they made in their lives.

What’s similar and more relatable is that we think that the people in our community that seem to have it all (aka good looks, social skills, creativity, and smarts) should be the happiest people in the world. In my experience though, when you really get to know these supposedly perfect people, they are either miserable, incredibly flawed, or both.

When I moved to California my best friend was a guy named… for the sake of anonymity I’m going to call him “John”. John was always better than me, he was always slightly taller than me, he outperformed me in sports, he did better in school, he was way better with girls than me, and in every way I can remember he was what I wanted to be. To me, he was perfect; he had everything going for him. When he moved away a few years ago I was both sad and relieved. I lost my best friend but I didn’t have to stand in his shadow anymore either. I still stalked him on Facebook though, so I still felt inferior to him on occasion, but about two months ago I was talking to him on the phone and catching up, when I found out that ever since John hit high school he developed a bit of a drinking habit and has recently been having fun getting plastered every Saturday night, and respectively been testing his plumbing every Sunday morning.

I looked up to this guy for the better part of my childhood, he was, as I said, everything that I wanted to be, and then I found out he was something that I very much did NOT want to be. I do want to make this clear; I’m not saying he’s a bad guy, because he isn’t, but his issue with alcohol abuse has dissolved a lot of my respect for him, and it’s made me realize this:

We need to appreciate what each of us have, and come to terms with what we are not.

I remember when I was little my Christmas list was just page after page of attributes from my favorite videogame characters. I was also told by many authority figures that if I tried really hard and set my mind to it I could be anything I wanted to be; unfortunately I can’t run as fast as sonic the hedgehog, I can’t actually save Princess Peach from a demonic turtle, and as I much as I tried I couldn’t convince my mother that when I turned ten I would go on my Pokémon journey.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">I know now that life isn’t only imperfect for me specifically, it is impossible for anyone to have a perfect life.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">I’ve come to terms that I have limitations and that I have flaws, but I reconcile with them and realize that I am what I am; I’m probably not going to get into the most prestigious college out of all of us, I probably won’t make the most money out of all of us, I’m not the most pleasant, funny, creative, sexy or even nicest person out of all of us but that doesn’t matter because I can be content with what I do have.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">I emphasize the parts of myself that I’m actually proud of, and now I’m much happier because of it. I still value intelligence quite highly, but in contrast to my previous self who only cared about trying to set up the illusion that he was especially bright, it’s not the only thing that’s important to me in a human being anymore.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Being kind, patient, loyal, devoted, helpful, and compassionate are all qualities that are just as, if not more so, vital as being able to score a 5 on the APUSH test.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">So, to wrap this up, in the America that I want to live in, I want my co-workers, my peers, my family, and my friends to all stop criticizing themselves so harshly, take a step back and say “I’m dumb, but it’s okay, because so is everybody else.”