Confidence vs. humility

Almost everybody struggles to some degree with achieving the balance between confidence and humility (although the latter is less fashionable than it used to be). Confidence tips so easily into into arrogance, presumption, and even delusion. If you doubt this, watch the early episodes of American Idol, any season. We all know how charming an arrogant jerk with an over-developed sense of entitlement is. There are few things more satisfying in life than watching him do a face-plant in the muck.

On the other hand, humility can tilt into discouragement, self-abasement, and even self-loathing. Misguided religious types have often failed to make this distinction and presented such unpretty things as an ideal to aspire to. Well, no. There is a world of difference between unworthy and worthless. Whiny self-hatred is not only unattractive, it's pretty much a guarantee of uselessness.

The sweet point in the middle of all this is evaluating yourself realistically, which is admittedly rather difficult. It's particularly difficult if you want to be a writer.

Why is that, you ask? (OK, so you didn't ask, but humour me a minute. I appreciate it.)

Because for every open spot on a publisher's list, there are probably at least 100 completed manuscripts out there, trying to elbow their way into position. Those are intimidating odds. That means if you're writing, and you have any serious hopes at all of being published, you have to believe somewhere deep inside you, that you are better than 99% of your fellow aspirants (all of whom believe the same thing). That's got to be something close to hubris. And in most cases, delusional hubris.

Of course, a lot of them are unaware of the odds, so if they're talented, they toil in blissful ignorance, and if not, they live in a fool's paradise. The rest of us, well, we keep teeter-tottering between the feeling that we can actually do this and the opposite feeling that we are out of our minds. We can easily go through the cycle from elation to despair and back again several times in one day.

It gets better. Almost every successful author went through a string of rejections before hitting paydirt. So even if publishing professionals keep saying "thanks, but no thanks" that doesn't necessarily mean you don't have what it takes. Perseverance becomes a necessary part of the equation. But wait a minute, isn't the definition of insanity repeating an action and expecting a different result?

Maybe you have to be insane to aspire to authordom.

So, writer or not, how do you find the sweet spot where confidence and humility are in perfect balance?


Technorati tags: Confidence, Humility, Balance

Naomi Lakritz is my new hero

You may recall that I raised my eyebrows a wee bit at the reaction of the Luther College gunman's parents, who wanted to reassure the world that their son was a good kid. I grumped a bit about the uselessness of a word that can expand to include almost any behaviour.

Naomi Lakritz grumped at greater length and brought up some excellent criticism of the modern tendency to excuse all and avoid hurting the self-esteem of our precious progeny, starting with this:

If the 16-year-old boy in Regina who took 300 students hostage this week and pointed a gun at the school's pastor is a good kid, what does a bad kid look like?

The day after the incident ended with the principal wrestling the gun away from the boy, and his subsequent arrest, lawyer Brad Tilling passed on a message from his parents: "They would like people to know that he is a good kid and obviously there was some difficulty the other day."

A "good kid?" An armed hostage-taking is "some difficulty?"

Read the whole thing. She wrote it a month ago, but I suspect it was available only to subscribers before now.


Technorati tags: Naomi Lakritz, Self-esteem, Luther College

The Walrus is angry

This is a rant. A personal, hot-under-the-collar, spitting-indignation rant. I normally try to keep the tone of this blog civil and rational and respectful. Not right now. If these things offend you, you might wish to go elsewhere.

There is a young lady on one of the forums I frequent who is twisting in excruciating pain. Why? Because her husband is not sure he wants to stay married to her. He says he loves her, treats her well in every other regard, but he's not too sure about the commitment thing. Worse yet, this young man is a Christian. Or he says he is.

Man, do I want to take this young fellow and smack him up both sides of the head. Real hard. Grow up, buddy. It's time to stop being a self-absorbed adolescent and start acting like a real man. Guess what? Your life is not all about you and the latest little wind of emotion blowing through you. It's not about your self-fulfillment or your self-realization. Marriage is not about your comfort and meeting your needs. Marriage is about love and commitment and meeting somebody else's needs. You stood up in public and swore, before God and man, to do that very thing.

Have you no self-respect? Would you be willing to stand again in front of the same people who were present at your wedding and say, "Yes, she's a fine woman, and I think highly of her, and I know I promised for better or for worse, but I don't think I feel like it anymore. And I am willing to subject her to searing agony because I don't feel too sure about it anymore. But that's OK, right? It's all about how I feel, right? My ambivalent feelings are more important than her happiness, than my word, than my commitment to God." I dare you. Do it.

I wouldn't treat my worst enemy the way you are treating your wife. You claim to love her, and yet you are torturing her as surely as if you were holding hot irons to her skin. I am beyond disgusted. What you desperately need is somebody to tell you to your face that you are being cruel and selfish and that there is absolutely no excuse for it. This is not a time for sympathy and soft words. Get over yourself and get back home and love your wife.

I just hope you have parents or a pastor or a best friend who will not hold back for fear of seeming uncharitable. Honour your word, honour your commitments, honour your wife. That's the only way you'll get my respect and deep down I'm sure you realize that's what you need to do to find some self-respect too.


Technorati tags: Divorce, Marriage, Commitment

The fallacy of building self-esteem

Patrick Mascoe owes his first grade teacher a debt of gratitude. He failed him. And little Patrick, who had missed a lot of school because of asthma attacks, got a second chance to learn the fundamentals that were so necessary to ensure his success in future years. Patrick, now a teacher himself, credits that teacher with saving his entire school career. And his frustration is acute as he sees his attempts to do the same stymied by principals and parents who argue that it will damage the children's self-esteem.

He explained to my parents that without mastering the basics I would lag behind. He saw it more as an opportunity for me to learn what I had missed. I can honestly say that had I not repeated Grade 1, I probably would not have graduated from high school. My self-esteem wasn't a concern. My academic development was. Having obtained three university degrees (one in education), in retrospect my Grade 1 teacher did the right thing.

Had I grown up in today's education system, with its tendency to abolish student failure, I would not have been permitted to repeat Grade 1. Today's educational environment believes that failing is taboo. Students don't fail because it's deemed bad for their self-esteem. Feeling good about a subject is now more important than being good at it.

As teachers, we tell our students not to be afraid to ask questions, don't be afraid to make mistakes, and don't be afraid to fail because this is how we learn, but we are being hypocritical because rather than embracing failure as a method of learning, we are now being instructed by administrators to ignore it.

So the students go to the next grade anyway, sometimes with their basic skills years behind the proper levels. Their self-esteem is definitely upheld by being the stupid kid in the class, often being labelled "special needs" when their only special need is to learn discipline and responsibility. They learn the important lesson that effort and accomplishing goals is pointless; they will be rewarded no matter what they do. You can imagine what a useful preparation for the real world that is! They hit the job market full of confidence, knowing that no matter how poor their output, they will be promoted and praised nonetheless.

Not.

The foolishness of such an approach is so immense that it makes you wonder what planet the educators who support it come from. But unlike aliens, their existence can easily be demonstrated. They are in charge of the system.

They are undoubtedly the same ones who keep feeding the children the line: "Follow your dreams. Just believe in yourself, and whatever you want to be, you can be." This is nothing short of child abuse, in my mind.

I know I am offending the prevailing dogma here, but you can't sell a product like that without the appropriate warnings. It just ain't true in far too many cases. I personally have watched friends with tin ears and no rhythm convince themselves they can be musicians, squat homely girls dream of being fashion models, and do-nothing students persuade themselves that their future holds lucrative contracts as rap artists. An entire industry has been created to exploit these poor deluded fools and expose them to public ridicule. We all know that American Idol is just as much about mocking the losers - often viciously - as it is about helping the winners. We sell them the dream and then jeer at them as we brutally wake them.

Before you tell your children to pursue their dream, there are some important questions they need to ask themselves. Not only do they need to ask if they have the basic abilities necessary but it is also worth determining if the dream itself is worthy of pursuit. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream worth pursuing. But most of the visions dancing in their heads are taudry affairs, toxic sugarplums of self-aggrandization and ego-inflation, the worship of celebrity rather than the creationof excellence.

If our children are taught to work toward dreams of excellence, not fame, and to cherish the process as much as the result, then they will not be crushed when the shoddy structure of fantasy castles collapses on them. Dreams rooted in reality and a worthy cause are the kind that they devote their lives too, becoming truly rich in the process.

Gleanings from the blogosphere, Aug. 30

After my two earlier posts today, it seems appropriate to signal the Bull Moose's musings on evil and Ahmadinejad. Somehow, it ties right in.

Annie at Ambivablog is talking about the dark side of hyper-freedom, which refuses to accept any limits. Her excerpts from http://victoriaroserobin.blogspot.com/2006/07/what-is-freedom-anyway-july-4-2006.html are spot on. Unfortunately.

Anonymous Liberal muses, with some bitterness, on the importance of getting the media on your side if you are a presidential hopeful.

Technorati tags: Ahmadinejad, [tagname], [tagname]