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One of the things I always hated about Romania was the way people treat those they consider to be less intelligent than them. This type of situation is a bit ironic, since usually those people who consider themselves to be very smart aren't, because they are arrogant and ignorant.

But this type of behavior affected me a lot as a kid. I was judged many times throughout my childhood because I just didn't understand things as fast as others. Everyone told me it was wrong, that I should try harder and that I should pay more attention. And so I did. But I didn't enjoy it.

I was told many times that I am smart and that I have a lot of potential, but I'm lazy. I didn't want to be lazy, nor did I consider myself to be so. I was doing my best, most of the time. I just wasn't motivated, or interested in the things that I was supposed to learn about and figure out immediately.

All that negative experience translated into a "fear" of not understanding the things around me, a fear that stayed with me for a very long time and is still present in my day to day life. I was, for a very long time, afraid of reading a book and not understanding its deeper meaning, or of watching a movie and not understanding its story or deeper message, or listening to music that had a deep meaning and not figuring out what it was.

This made me very anxious when watching certain things, because I always felt like I had to understand them on my first interaction with them. If I didn't, I would spend hours pondering over the meaning of the book I just read or the movie I just watched, simply because I had to make sure I understood what it was about. If I didn't, I thought I would be considered stupid by those people who don't even know I exist any more.

It was only in time that I accepted the fact that I am not as smart as I think I am, nor as smart as others say I am, and that I sometimes need a bit of help when trying to understand certain things. I'm not necessarily stupid, but I'm not a genius either. I get some things very quickly, but not others. That makes me normal. And a desire to learn, even when not understanding at first, should also be normal.

Once I accepted that, things became much more enjoyable. I was able to read books and watch movies or listen to music and not worry too much about their meaning. If I felt that there was more to those things than what I understood, I simply searched for more details and learned from those who understood more than me.

There were two instances in which that happened recently.

It first happened when watching the movie Annihilation. I watched it, enjoyed it, but I didn't really understand what it was about. It seemed a bit too abstract for me, and although I thought of a few theories, none of them seemed to fit well enough. To my defense, I heard from someone that they saw a very scary scene in it, terrifying even, and so I expected the movie to be horror, which it isn't, and that added to my confusion.

Unsatisfied with my own ideas, I did a quick search on Google and read a short article in which the author talked about the main theme of the movie being cancer, and the journey of going through such an experience, pictured in an  abstract way.

Then it hit me. It was at that moment that I understood the entire movie. So much more made sense. And then I started appreciating the entire movie much more. Everything seemed way more beautiful after I realized just what the movie was about.

If I would've refused to search for more details, and I would've kept thinking that Annihilation was just a bad horror movie, then I would've been blind to the beauty of the movie and what it represents.

The second instance was when a few months ago I discovered a video called [The Lessons I Learned From Kung Fu Panda](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkcs-fJVyO8). The clip is 30 minutes long. Its creator makes an entire analysis of the three movies and extracts from them the most important lessons that those movies try to teach us.

I watched all of the Kung Fu Panda movies a few years ago, and I loved them all, but after watching this clip and gaining a much better understanding of how deep those animated movies can be, I gained so much more appreciation for them and I recently watched all of them again.

In both instances I enjoyed the content I watched, and yet in both cases I gained a much greater appreciation after learning more about it from people who spent more time thinking about its meaning and sharing their ideas with others.

It's okay if you don't understand everything at first. Not everyone does, not even those who try to seem like they do. Sometimes they just act it out to seem smart. But part of being smart means being aware of your limitations, accepting them and trying to improve.