“Jenny has no patience for the slow and the stupid.”

This was what someone said about me in an anonymous 360 review.

I had to read it a few times.

What the hell did THAT mean?

I was mortified that someone thought me to be intolerant in any way. Never would I want to make anyone feel slow or stupid.

At the same time - I was oddly flattered. From a glass-half-full perspective, that person was suggesting I had standards.

Slow and stupid.

Those are words you use for people you’ve written off.

Am I the kind of person who dismisses someone who doesn’t know the same things I do? Or think the way I do?

I really hope not.

I don’t think “stupid” is the right word for what I can’t tolerate.

I have enormous patience for people who are genuinely trying to figure something out - people who ask questions because they want to understand, who admit they don’t know something, who are actively seeking to know more.

That doesn’t feel like stupidity to me.

What I have zero patience for is a very specific and different thing: willful ignorance.

Someone who confidently holds a position they’ve never examined. Who walks into a conversation having done no reading, no thinking, no preparation, and proceeds to preach from on high.

Who, if you offered them any information that could change their mind, would simply refuse it - because changing their mind would take more energy than they were willing to spend.

That’s the stupid I have no patience for.

I’m not apologizing for it.

I’m also not saying I’ve never been guilty of it myself. At one time or another, I think everyone spouts off on something they don’t know enough about.

Occasionally, you get smacked down by someone who does. And that’s how you learn to ask questions - or just keep your mouth shut.

I try to do my research. I try to see both sides of an issue. And I try to show up informed, with a few questions about things that I’m still not clear on.

My ignorance is not willful. It’s unintentional. And it’s something I try to remedy at the earliest possible opportunity.

The 360 feedback isn’t entirely wrong – but I don’t think it’s the slow or the stupid that make me impatient.

It’s the immovable and the incurious.