Oh Dave! Now

Naïve. \nä-ˈēv, nī-\

adjective.

1 : marked by unaffected simplicity : unsophisticated, artless, ingenuous
2 : deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment; especially : credulous
3 a : self-taught, primitive b : produced by or as if by a self-taught artist <naive murals>

synonyms see natural

Huh. So that’s what “naïve” really means. Funny what you can learn when you open a book, or in this case, search the Merriam-Webster website.

People have told me all my life that they think I am naïve. Sometimes they quickly backpedaled and said they thought my naiveté was really cute and they liked that about me. I think they saw my face go from blissful innocence to killer rage. I thought being called naïve was an insult. I zeroed in on the negative connotations of definition #1, i.e., that I was an airhead, a bimbo, a country bumpkin, a clueless little boy who would get eaten alive in the big bad world and needed to be protected.

The fact is they didn’t know what they were talking about. The word “naïve” is one of those words, like “ironic,” that is frequently misused. Naiveté is not usually a permanent state of being or character. It’s a stage that everyone goes through in experience and education. Or is sometimes a deliberate decision to stay unpolluted by potentially influencing opinions and history in order to discover and experience something for oneself (e.g., teenagers and me).

Allow me the latitude to compose a few paragraphs that will elucidate and illuminate these conceptions further. Ahem.

I will admit that when my energy and enthusiasm is high, I get caught up in the moment and surface impressions. (But inside, trust me, I’m noticing what is really going on.) In social situations I put a simple, pleasant face forward and politely acknowledge each and every person, taking them at face value, assuming the best in all of mankind. I walk with purpose and greet others with a nod and a smile (as if everyone likes me even though I know they don’t). And then someone speaks to me. SCREECH—PANIC—CRASH!

I suddenly become tongue-tied and nervous. If I say anything at all, it comes out mumbled and incoherent. “Yes, a good morning. Take it a good one!” And I turn away.

So that’s one reason I come across as naïve. I’m incapable of spontaneous verbal communication. Therefore, people think I’m a simpleton or stupid. You should have seen the baffled look on the face of my first semester college French teacher (a pretty blonde, voluptuous, bubbly young woman) when she handed back the first exam of the semester—I had gotten the highest score. My score was unexpected. She even said to me after the first couple of weeks that maybe I should transfer out. As far as speaking French and class participation, I was a dolt. When she effusively greeted my entrance to the room with “Bonjour, monsieur! Comment t’allez-vous?” I would stare blankly, grunt, and say nothing in return, unable to hear even the simplest phrase at the time. But once I see something printed, in black and white, it tends to stick with me. I had studied my textbook, practiced writing French, and aced the test. What? She expected me to hear the words in class and imitate the sounds without knowing how the words were spelled and ordered? It doesn’t work that way, not for me.

Similarly, an office friend burst into laughter when I told her I had tried out for “Jeopardy.” She just couldn’t see me on the show, even though when I watch it, I usually know a lot of the answers. And when we took a trip to Paris together, she had the same baffled look on her face as my French teacher did when, after a quick lunch at a Tuileries Garden outdoor café, I casually spoke French to the waiter, settling the bill and asking him for a bottle of water to go, all of which he understood instantly. She hadn’t understood a word of it. Startled, she said, “I didn’t know you could speak French like that.”  

Well, sure, I can do just about anything when I need to. I’m nowhere near fluent in French, civil engineering, bread making, drug use, gardening, or kinky sex. But if the situation arises, after a muddled period of naiveté, I can figure out enough to get by. What I didn’t tell her was that as she babbled on about what Impressionist paintings we would see at the Musée de l’Orangerie, I was forming and practicing in my mind the phrases I would say to the waiter.

In my senior year of high school for the yearbook “hall of fame,” I was voted as the Most Timid and I was told by someone on the yearbook committee that I came in second for the Most Intelligent, out of a class of over 400. That pretty much sums it up—my timidity masks my intelligence and I appear naïve. That’s part of it anyway. There’s more.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a tool that has helped me to understand how I process information, compared to others. I’ve taken the test a few times and my results typically are I-S-T-J, or Introvert-Sensing-Thinking-Judging. In particular, I think the “I” and the “J” contribute to my being perceived as naïve.

In this model, the Introvert piece means I process information internally rather than being able to converse verbally on the spot, whether in English or in French, without prior study and thought. I get excited about ideas and per the website’s definition of an Introvert, “I sometimes forget to check with the outside world to see if my ideas really fit the experience.”

This happens all the time with everyone. You might get excited about remodeling your kitchen or starting a new love relationship and your imagination runs wild. But once you get into it, you find out that you had been naïve. The reality is very different than what you imagined. Another example is going to a new movie—you’re all excited about seeing “Avatar” because you’ve seen the trailers and heard all the buzz. And then when you actually see it, even if you enjoy it, there is a letdown, and maybe you feel foolish for getting all worked up. Now that you’ve seen it, you’re obviously no longer naïve about the experience of seeing it. (Even if you don’t comprehend or care about what went on behind the scenes to create the movie.)

I get worked up in my mind prior to visiting a city for the first time. Before I ever went to Paris, I had studied a map of the city repeatedly and knew by heart the layout of the city center. I romantically planned to take the Grande Promenade from Notre Dame Cathedral, through the Louvre and the Tuileries, up the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe, over to the Eiffel Tower and back to the Latin Quarter. Of course, I was naïve about the reality that the map didn’t show—the pigeons, traffic, cigarette smoke, dead flowers, and passed-out vagrants as well as the glittering lights, the sculpted façade of Notre Dame, the smell of fresh croissants and bread.

On the other hand, some of my moments of naiveté are my own fault, due to the “J” portion of my personality. I am goal-oriented and get bored with in-depth processing, including conversation. I like to attack a task with purpose, with quick judgment of what needs to get done. I complete it efficiently and successfully without thinking it through entirely before I get started. When I pick up a newspaper, I read the headlines and skip the meat of most articles so I can finish and get on with my day. So I’m informed about what’s happening but don’t ask me to give a speech on the details of an issue. I know I’m not alone in the “uninformed” aspect of naiveté, but that’s more due to our reliance on sound-bites and Twittering than personality type. We have the opportunity with the internet to bury ourselves in pages of detail on any given subject, but who has the time, unless, apparently, it’s about Tiger Woods’ affairs and sex addiction.

So okay, at times I am naïve about certain things but then, if I have enough interest, I’ll read up on it and expand my knowledge, like I did when I figured out how to create a blog here on wordpress.com (there’s a lot of tools I didn’t bother with—just learned the basics). But I suppose in social situations, due to my introverted personality, people will continue to experience me as a deer in the headlights.

Nonetheless, the next time someone says that I’m naïve, my response will be, “No, I’m not. But you obviously are in the ways of Dave.” 

(See, I just have to figure out what to say ahead of time. Let’s hope I can say it without sounding stupid or naïve.)