When Does One Plus One Not Equal Two?

     I know I'm not actually schizophrenic or bipolar, but I do have two sides that don't add up.  Outwardly, in my relationship with the world-at-large, I try to be amusing and friendly, which too often, I think, gets distorted into a series of compulsively "clever" remarks--or even smart-alecky ones.  The impulse comes from some deep drive to make the perfectly-timed and pitched bon mot, but when it fails, it looks and sounds clownish and sometimes churlish.  And it's embarrassing.  But I do it anyway, because when it works, and it usually does, I like being me.
     At the same time, I've spent my entire life being serious.  I wasn't always a serious student, though I wanted to be, and gradually did become one.  I early on subscribed to the idea that education is a lifelong process, and I've always valued the quotation attributed to Michelangelo toward the end of his long life:   "I am still learning."  Through the years I've thought as deeply as my mind would allow, managed to write down a great deal of what I thought about, and been fortunate enough to have a fair amount of it published.  I've smiled here and there in my writing, but as a matter of principle, I kept humor out.  I wouldn't allow it to compromise my seriousness.   
     Exactly how these two sides coexist within me, I don't know.  But they do.  And on balance, despite being embarrassed now and then by the failed witticism or the over-serious paragraph, essay, or book, I'm content to be represented in this world by my polar opposites.  Consistency is highly overrated.