Carl spent his school years unhappily ensconced in special ed. classes. In late middle age, he reported that he still felt dumb. He also reported much time and little attention he sat through in special education classes where they taught little of use or value, but he certainly learned the lesson about how dumb he was. Now in his fifties, he held to that identity and image of himself as if it did him some good. In a sense it did because any image of himself, no matter how badly distorted, offered some sense of tangible identity. No matter how limited and limiting, some identity feels better than none.
He also told me something about his life as part of our conversation, and through that discussion, I discovered generally how dumb he wasn't. Carl had shown and practiced his intelligence, his smart of one kind or another all his adult life. When we listen to anyone's life story, even when we tell our own it to ourselves, we can always reflect on how much smart it takes to accomplish any of the things we did in our lives—even the mistakes. That inner story matters. In some very real ways, we are, after all, the story we tell ourselves.
Carl finished high school while working nearly full time. He married young, and his marriage stayed intact, affectionate, and continuing strong. He spoke about his Lupe, the woman he married, happily with affection and respect. They raised three children all of whom were still in town and relating well to each other and to their parents. He spoke of family exchanges that also sounded filled with mutual affection and respect. He even told stories about how they helped one another without any self-consciousness about the nature of the story—just stories about what happened to them. Carl told the stories out of fun and friendship not trying to prove something about him or them.
He began his very young adult work as a laborer in a copper mine to support his family. In the many years he worked at the mine, he learned to operate heavy equipment and handle very exacting tasks with those enormous and powerful machines. He did so without any major incident or accident. Eventually, as with many others, the copper market faltered and, along with most of the workers, he got laid off. He and Lupe started their first business together which went well, and he trained and went to work as a corrections officer which he did successfully for many more years. He experienced an injury and could no longer continue as an officer. Vocational rehabilitation sent him to me to assist him in gaining the knowledge and ability needed to write a business plan so Vocational Rehabilitation would give him money to start a business he had in mind. During his work with me, he approached another lending source and secured some support from them anticipating a greater economic need than Vocational Rehabilitation could serve. He had already attended a community college course in writing a business plan, received an A for the course, and now he wanted to make a number of changes and revisions so he could expand and manipulate some of his original ideas. He also felt the need to expand his computer knowledge. We did all that together. Eventually, he expanded his idea into another field altogether. In the meantime, he continued working with Lupe in keeping their long successful cleaning business operating well.
Carl may have felt dumb through all of his life, but his life story, when we see it clearly and simply without a negative meaning perspective, expresses his excellence, his determination, and his smart.