My best friend once accidentally drove into a gigantic light pole. This was a really, really strong pole. A whole city commissioned it, men and women in business suits signed off on it, a construction company built it, many important people nodded and patted each other on the back I’m sure, proud of how strong and sturdy this pole was. “What a fine pole!” They all thought, twirling their mustaches, or whatever city officials do.
When my friend’s car hit it, it toppled over and the pole itself instantly snapped in two.
Now, if I imagine that a puddle of water had pooled underneath the point of this pole’s impact, the question of the water’s survivability is completely irrelevant. It’s so mutable, so moveable, so soft that the concept of it ‘breaking’ or not is completely insane to even consider. It’s just water! Things move through it, ripples form, droplets splatter - but nothing can break it.
It might seem obvious, but this type of mutability is deeply underrated when it comes to considerations on ‘strength.’
Emotionally, we typically think of strength as an unbending show of solid force. We use our preconceived ideals of ‘strength’ to suppress the actual emotional truths we might be experiencing. When we’re scared, we must put on a brave face. When we’re sad, we must not cry in public. We’re nervous for a first date, but we greet them with a smile and pretend we’re unshakeable. A loved one says something unkind, and we force ourselves to think, “Your words can’t hurt me! I’m too self-assured for that!” And so on.
And when we do that, that show of force is a lie of sorts. Because we actually are nervous for the date, and our feelings actually were a little jostled by what our loved one said. And that truth is being suppressed and replaced by something inauthentic.
When we replace inauthentic emotions with lies - or maybe better described as an avoidance of the actual truthiest-truths of the moment - what we’re actually engaging in is an admission of our own discomfort in ourselves. Pretending to be confident when we’re not is no real display of confidence - it’s a facade meant to mask the fact that we don’t trust in the validity of our own experience.
The idea that being nervous, hurt, or self-conscious is something to be more or less ashamed of - or changed even - is wildly self-deprecating if it’s what we’re actually experiencing. And doesn’t reframing our emotional experience for the benefit of another person’s interpretation of us seem a little, oh, I don’t know… weak?
Within the very first minute of meeting my fiancé in person for the first time, he immediately rattled off a list of all the reasons I should not date him, which ranged from personal to professional, and included several sprinklings of off-the-cuff compliments, warnings, and curse-words over being too nervous to finish sentences. I had never experienced anything like it, and I looked up at this man and thought, ‘My god, now there’s a person who’s so assured of himself that he’ll just say whatever damn thing comes to his mind, even if it risks him looking bad.’ It was so strange and wonderful that I fell in love with him almost immediately.
It was one of the most impressive displays of confidence I’d ever experienced with a romantic interest - in part because it was so glaringly counterintuitive. In place of false bravado or immediate lists of accomplishments meant to sway my budding impression of him, I received an outpouring of real, deeply impenetrable courage, completely unobstructed by any bullshit. He was who he was, and I knew in an instant that the difference between what he was truly feeling and what he would say to me about those feelings were near indistinguishable. In that moment, he seemed like the captain of some kind of renegade, unsinkable ship - but also, like the type of person who ultimately didn’t care if the ship sank, because he didn’t rely on it anyway, and knew how to swim with sharks. And sure, he lifts heavy things around the house and makes me feel safe when we walk down a dark street at night, but it’s the complete trust in his own unshakeable vulnerability that causes the constant swellings of my respect for his fortitude.
The truth is, even if it’s only on intuitive levels, most people can see through whatever lie it is we’re telling. If we share an accomplishment only meant to impress others, they might take in the accomplishment and alter their perception of us to some shallow degree, but mostly, they’ll feel the subtle manipulation of our intentions to alter their perception of us - and anytime we’re trying to alter someone else’s perception of us through insincere persuasion, all we’re really doing is subconsciously revealing the fact that we’re not yet secure enough to let ourselves externally be as we really are. Our self-image isn’t, well, very strong.
And that insecurity is totally okay. Insecurity in and of itself is not weak - it’s the action in response to that feeling that reveals our strength. Fully owning and lovingly embracing a difficult emotion is, at first, actually pretty scary. Profound sincerity, in all of its softness, requires a courageous amount of self-perception. The really powerful move is not to stifle, ignore, or forcibly transmute self-doubt into obstinate pretend-confident resolution. The real power comes from embracing the uncomfortable nature of our own vulnerability, examining it’s value, and letting it flow through us without occlusion - knowing full and well that we’re strong enough to navigate whatever undertows are conjured up from our own honesty.
Nothing displays true self confidence like an all-encompassing acceptance of our wholly natural and completely admissible ‘weaknesses’. When forced into uncomfortable positions, hard exteriors are vulnerable to cracks, while soft ones are prone to adaptation. We can’t be crushed or shattered by a swell we’re not bracing against - all it can do, really, is flow right through us, swaying, but never breaking us.
Anyway, all this to say, I haven’t written in a while, so I wonder if this essay is bad.
Oh well!
xoxo
Well said. Life would be much simpler to navigate if we all lived by that principle.
> And that insecurity is totally okay. Insecurity in and of itself is not weak - it’s the action in response to that feeling that reveals our strength.
I found this really interesting and will mull over it. I'm not sure how to reconcile it with the previous paragraph, which talks about the weakness of one's self-image. Isn't insecurity weak in that sense?