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. 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.