Taking charge of yourself involves putting to rest some prevalent myths. At the top of the list is the notion that intelligence is measured by your ability to solve problems-to read, write and to compute. This vision of intelligence stresses formal education and bookish excellence as the true measures of self-fulfillment. It encourages a kind of intellectual prejudice that has brought with it some discouraging results. We have come to believe that someone who has more education, who is very good at some form of school discipline is “intelligent”. Yet mental hospitals are filled with patients who have graduation certificates. A true indicator of intelligence is an effective, happy life lived each day.
If you are happy, if you live every moment for everything that is worth, then you are an intelligent person. Problem solving is a useful help to your happiness, but if you know that given your inability to resolve a particular concern you can still choose happiness for yourself, or at a minimum refuse to choose unhappiness, then you are intelligent. You are intelligent because you have the powerful weapon against nervous breakdowns.
“Intelligent” people do not have nervous breakdowns because they are in charge of themselves. They know how to choose happiness over depression: because they know how to deal with the problems of their lives.
You can begin to think of yourself as truly intelligent on the basis of what you choose when facing difficulties.
The life struggles are pretty much the same for each of us. Everyone who is involved with other human beings in any social context has similar difficulties. Disagreements, conflicts and compromises are part of what it means to be human.
Similarly, money, age, sickness, deaths, natural disasters and accidents are all events which present problems to all human beings. But some people are able to make it, to avoid depression and unhappiness despite such occurrences, while others suffer nervous breakdowns. Those who recognize problems as a human condition and don’t measure happiness by absence of problems are the most intelligent people, also, the most rare.
26. The conventional notion of intelligence mentioned in the passage ________.
A. is the root of all mental distress
B. is a widely held but wrong concept
C. contributes to one’s self fulfillment
D. helps eliminate intellectual prejudice
27. We can infer from the passage that an intelligent person knows ________.
A. how to handle the problems in his life
B. how to persuade others to compromise
C. how to put up with some prevalent myths
D. how to find the best way to achieve success
28. What does the underlined sentence in Paragraph 1 imply?
A. Many hospitals are full of mental patients.
B. Most mental patients are college graduates.
C. Most patients at mental hospitals are intelligent.
D. Many well educated people have mental illnesses.
29. According to the passage, what kind of people is rare?
A. Those who emphasize bookish excellence.
B. Those who regard problems as unavoidable.
C. Those who believe problems can be avoided.
D. Those who view absence of problems as happiness.
30. What does the passage mainly discuss?
A. Intelligent people’s problems
B. Intelligent and unintelligent people
C. Intelligent people’s ideas about happiness
D. Intelligent people and nervous breakdowns
