Self-confidence. I've been thinking a great deal about this recently. I have now come to a very unofficial, untested hypothesis, and, being who I am, I do not feel it will truly exist as an entity in this world unless I express it. I warn you: these are highly experimental musings of an eighteen year old who has no qualms about understanding nothing what-so-ever. But, I think I might have something here, for once.
It struck me one day in the middle of my high school years that I was very lonely. It was not that I was very often alone. In fact, I was quite often blessed with being the center of attention. But when I looked around me, I never felt as if I truly belonged nor did I have a sense of over-whelming pertinence in my actions. Even when people might sit for hours in my company and laugh at our fabulous inside jokes, once they left, the preponderant sensation of loneliness snuck into the chairs and voids they had just momentarily vacated. Sometimes in the coffee shops and diners we frequented, I would become increasingly aware that I was a sentient being and that even when they left, I went on functioning. Surprisingly enough, this had never dawned on me. I had gone completely through the eighties, the veritable ME decade, without this revealing insight. I think it was only when I was in France my senior year did this sensibility really strike me with its full-force.
The French compagne served as a great meditation inducer. I spent hours contemplating the hilly pastures and ancient battlefields that sprawled out before me. It felt wonderfully exhilarating to be independent of my past. I had made all new friends and was speaking French the way I had always wanted to: clearly, fluently, and without hesitation. I had always possessed the ability to do so, but somehow syntax and fear of embarrassment had paralyzed my lips and made them heavy when I attempted to speak in complex thoughts. A great equanimity had filled the places within me that had always been abysses. I was alone, but I was never lonely.
I found that my entire identity had been based upon facades and suppositions on the part of my peers and social group. They carried with them the integral components to my happiness. It took the entire conglomeration of them together to form Me. I had come to depend on their constant reassurance and ennumeration of the reasons why I was a worthwhile being. Once separated from their constant imposition upon my character, I was not only forced to, but ABLE to create my own certitude. So what made the transformation possible, I wondered. Obviously the change of venue aided the transition, but the self-confidence was formed out of material that had always been within me. I had carried the substance dormant within me my whole life, yet I had never had the incentive to waken it.
In my humble opinion, we all have this ability within our character. It is the stuff of life that brings true fulfillment. It is what makes for "meaning." With the lack of blind faith in our society, it is good to have something on which to fall back. It can be even better when that thing is yourself. I am in no way condemning friendship. That too is necessary for a complete existence. But the only thing you can truly take pride in is that which you carry in the base of your being. Self-confidence replaces fear, loathing, and the subsequent anger that results from the two. Once you feel confidence and reassurance from yourself, you cease to need outside inputs to reach happiness. Joy comes from the very fact that YOU ARE. Each day, by some wonder beyond human understanding, your eyes open and where there was the darkness of night and the moon, there is now the sun and brilliant light. And you might partake of this singular extravaganza another day. So few people openly appreciate this great pleasure. They are jaded and dissatisfied with life. I would challenge them to take pleasure not in only the great material achievements they make, but in the fact of their very existence. If "nothing" happens in a day, or a week, or even a month, take delight in the time you had to think and discover dynamics at play within your own self.
I am not advocating exceeding cockiness or narcissism. Those are not the types of confidence to which I refer. Rather, I am interested in the confidence that springs from contentment. Life is not always some phantasmagoric carnival meant to bedazzle us with its constant thrills and escapades. It is often meant to astound us with its quiet reverie and eternity. Unless we take into account the subtle sublimity of life, we will tire of life and think of it only as some circus. After enough performances, the clowns become inane, the tightrope walker's act ceases to be suspenseful, and the dog-faced boy loses his mystique and becomes merely grotesque.
This is the problem with attempting to resolve the conflict between childhood and adulthood. There is an interim period where the absolute wonder one experiences naturally as a child wanes before the maturity of self-confidence is realized. This period is one of intense doubt and contempt toward a life which once held innumerable joys. The loss of these pleasures creates pain so intense that the resentment and cynicism one forms never ceases. These people are left with a chasm that must then be crossed before true happiness can be realized once again in its adult manifestation. I often wonder if most of society does not get caught on the cynical, cheated-feeling side of the chasm between childlike wonder and mature appreciation and awe. Perhaps the ruination of innocence is too much to bear, so that they form defense mechanisms that carry through their adult lives. Were this the case, they would display qualities such as sarcasm, scorn, and disdain for all that people around them are finding to be beautiful. One could speculate that it is their envy which causes them to become bitter toward life and those possessing ardent vitality.
Once we possess true self-confidence, we are able to go easily into the realm of mature affinity for life. It is often the establishing of confidence that proves to be the problem. For me, it helped to start small. I simply lived by the motto "No matter where you go, there you are." Once while my car was broken down on the side of the highway, I looked around disparagingly only to discover the most delicate violet wildflowers growing amongst the quack grass and broken beer bottles. It seemed to represent that beauty can be found in the most seemingly wasted places even when the whole situation appears to be a total loss. No part of my life do I ever chalk up as a total loss. We have much to little time to not extract every moment of joy as is possible. I guess I do feel that I have crossed the greater part of the chasm between youth and maturity with self-confidence as my balancing rod. The fact that I can recognize that there is a difference in my life-view leads me to suppose this. If I were too mired in the"doing" of it, I believe I would be too distracted to see life as I do.
Achieving self-confidence seems a daunting task at the outset. There is risk and fear associated with taking that first step and perhaps being hurt again as we were when we initially began this nebulous journey toward maturity. But once taken, it becomes difficult to discern why we ever feared it to begin with such are the benefits of having done so. Growing up is a challenge that continues beyond the point where a boy's voice has finished changing and a girl's tumultuous hormone-activated emotions have settled out. It continues beyond the age of majority and sometimes even beyond our first car or child. But it is never beyond us to improve and make realizations in life. As Plato once wrote: "The life which is unexamined is not worth living."