Okay, so I’ll be the first to admit that I am not a particularly humble person (though, oddly enough, certain people would argue with me on that point; how could they possibly believe that they know better than ME?). I understand where this study is coming from. What I don’t get is why they didn’t ask me to be part of it. It would’ve been sooo much better.
That said, though, I also just really agree with the findings here. I think that this is a side-effect of our society these days: we are very achievement-driven, for one, so we’re encouraged to look as awesome as we can, because it could be the difference between getting into that school, or getting hired for that job, or even just getting the professor’s good graces in class so that maybe, just maybe, she’ll curve your grade a little because, hey, you deserve it.
That was a repulsively long sentence.
Anyway, that’s what we’re taught. We’re told we’re special from day one. And that’s where some of it comes from, too. We have an interesting contradiction in our culture: we are raised to be the best we can be, to achieve, and yet we are also raised in the belief that everyone is equal. This is simply not true. I am number one; all others are number two, or lower (a cookie for whoever can tell me what move that’s paraphrased from).
Joking aside, we are constantly bombarded with this contradictory signals, and it wreaks havoc with us. Complete. Havoc. Because we aren’t sure what we’re actually supposed to be doing. We know innately, I think, that it is a good thing to help each other, to give each other a hand now and again and to sometimes be selfless. If we don’t have a sense of it anyway, our parents or grandparents probably get that somewhere in our upbringing, too. But we’re supposed to just screw everyone else over regularly? Look out for number one? Because yeah, that’s gotten us really far to date.
For me this article hit close to home, not just because I consider myself a egomaniac-by-night, but because I am also intimately familiar with the other side which the article implies but doesn’t really discuss: that whole “miserable” side of the equation. Now, to be sure, “miserable” is a strong word - perhaps too strong for me. But suffice to say, I was always told that I was pretty awesome, and along the way I started actually believing it. Then, at some point, I was proven wrong…again, and again, and again. And now, every little setback I experience seems like this enormous failing. I hate that I can’t really make mistakes without feeling like I’ve fallen by the wayside and will never amount to anything because, whoops, I missed that comma splice, when I was editing my paper.
We shouldn’t busy ourselves celebrating how great we are, because a lot of the time we’re really not (except for me), especially when we’re tooting our own horn. There’s so much more I could say about the topic; it’s been on my mind for years. But I’ll spare you the experience. My point is this: we should be concerned with who we are, not how good we are at stuff, not how many people pay attention to us. We should take the small victories that come every day and be secure in the fact that we have fulfilled a great purpose to someone, somewhere; secure in the knowledge that our being has made a difference to someone (probably even someones).
Being as I’m a Trekkie, and I’ve already used one movie quote in this post, I’ll use another (from, as the beginning of the sentence foreshadowed, a Star Trek movie): “Don’t try to be a great man, just be a man, and let history make its own judgments.” That’s what we don’t get. We’re too wrapped up in being great people. But why, in the end, does it matter?
And why can’t we just escape it?
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