A lesson that took me a long time to learn, and at terrible personal cost, is that being smart doesn’t matter very much. I was good at academic stuff as a kid, so tons of adults told me that was the most important thing ever, and I’ve come to realize that was wrong of them.

Let’s say, as a fictional example, that I’m top 1% of the population in terms of some abstract measure of intelligence (IQ is an awful one, but let’s not get caught up on that). If no one values time spent with people on a lower rung, not only can I not spend time with the people below me on the curve, but people higher won’t spend time with me. That gives me such a tiny fraction of the population I can interact with, it’s absurd! Meanwhile, people smarter than me are still common enough that I’d encounter several a day – I’m hardly exceptional enough to be terribly important. What a lonely life that would be!

So three further lessons I’ve learned, and I think these are important, go something like this:

1. Intellectual challenges are not scarce. They are a dime a dozen, I can invent them myself inside my head, or pick any number of other problems online. Sometimes I can get paid to solve them, whatever. So I don’t need more people to give me those. What’s really valuable are the people that challenge you to grow, to become more. It doesn’t take intelligence to look you in the eyes when you’re being a smartass, and ask you “Do you want to be right, or helpful?”.
2. Better to look for (and learn from) people who are kind and wise than who are smart. The opposite of a great truth is another great truth, the opposite of wisdom and kindness are substantially less desirable.
3. The harshest lessons in life are always when you trust the wrong person. Harsher still, is when this person was yourself. So it’s wise to enter all relationships carefully – with respect, I don’t think the fact you are thinking about this beforehand is wrong, but your focus might be misplaced. I’m just a stranger on the Internet though.