Every Friday I meet on Zoom with four writing colleagues, where we do two creative writing exercises, one fiction and one non-fiction. Someone provides a prompt and then we have just ten minutes to write the piece.

Not having anything to post today, I thought I’d share what I wrote last Friday. It’s the non-fiction one, and the prompt was, “If you’re so smart, why don’t you fix everything?” Here’s my ten-minute (unedited) effort.

Usually when someone says this to you, it’s because you’ve just had a disagreement, or you’ve been speaking bluntly about a topic that’s subject to many opinions. And usually they don’t really think you’re smart at all.

There’s also a certain defensiveness about the tone. I’ve seen this around corporate boardroom tables, usually after a heated argument about why we’re not even close to meeting the goals set out in the strategic plan.

I’ve heard it when a group of friends or colleagues are in deep, often alcohol driven discussion of some complex subject — like how to find world peace.

The fact is, most of us have opinions about most things, and we can get quite heated about expressing them. But for the most part we realize we can’t fix everything — even if we are smart.

I for one wouldn’t like to be running any country right now, but I have opinions about decisions I see being made, even though I don’t have access to the information behind those decisions. And most people I know are the same.

So the challenge is not valid. Just because I’m smart doesn’t mean I can fix everything. And just because I can’t fix everything doesn’t mean I’m not smart.