Like everyone of us stumbling across this earth, most days I just live. I do what needs to be done, I entertain odd little thoughts and wonders and fantasies that meander in and out of my brain, and I make it to the next day without any real conscious thought about how I am and where I am and what I am in the world.
Then are the stand-out days – not because anything happens, really, but because I feel strong and capable and smart and desirable and generally all-round confident in my life and my value.
And, of course, the days of struggle – the days I feel vulnerable and insecure, ugly and weak, andcertain that everything I think is good must be only a trick of the light.
Sometimes it is hard to trust in our own value. Sometimes it is hard to believe that anyone else sees any good in us. Sometimes it feels like we are tolerated, allowed, put-up-with, and that any moment now all that we have will crumble when the people around us realize there’s something better, someone better.
We all have these days, and for each of us there are different aspects of our lives that are more often confident and others that are more often insecure. I’ve often thought about this in the context of the University, where I work. I’m a Union rep here, representing faculty in their employment struggles, alternating many times a day between legal advisor, counselor, confidante, strategist, organizer. But I’m also an academic myself at heart, having subjected myself to far more formal education than is good for anyone. And I notice each and every day how the whole institution of the University is permeated with a tremendous imposter-syndrome.
Academics make their lives from the idea that they are smart, that their minds can come up with important ideas that can change the world. Academics make their lives on the generally-accepted premise that they are somehow brighter and more creative and more insightful that the rest of the population. It is the single most-important myth of the University, the foundation for everything that happens at this place, and the myth appealed to as much by faculty in their role as workers as in their role as scholars.
Now, when I was in school, reading my books and writing my papers and doing my presentations, I consistently felt like a fraud. And that wasn’t just me, but is a feature of most student life. We pretend we know more than we do, we try to put on an air of confidence, we find ways to turn questions and discussions around to subjects we know slightly more about, all in order to keep up the act, to prevent our teachers and other students from realizing what we ourselves know to be true – that we are confused and muddled and certain of very little, and that we are nowhere near as well-versed in literature and history and scientific principle as we pretend.
I realized that all students felt this when I was in grad school. And I realized through my job as faculty union guy that pretty much all profs feel the same way. It’s a collective myth sustained by a collective pretending to mask a collective insecurity and a collective fear of that inevitable day that someone will catch on, someone will realize that we’re not all that smart after all, that that book, that article, that argument, that turn of phrase, or even that Nobel Prize was a freak accident, a bluff that somehow hasn’t yet been found out. But it will be, one day, somehow. Every academic feels that. Every academic fears it.
But y’know, none of that really makes a difference. Sure, it matters for individuals, who it hangs over day after day, and occassionally torments to the point of incapacity. And, yes, the myth itself is a problem in that it sustains elitism and classism and is so often used as a hammer to silence other voices. But at the same time, the myth actually does serve a purpose, I suppose. I mean, if we all went around puddles of tears or knots of insecurity, not a hell of alot would get done, would it? In academia or in relationships or in parenting or in sports or in music – in absolutely every moment of our lives – if we ever dropped the myths, dropped the pretending, we would be a more honest planet but certainly not a sustainable one. So, I suppose at the end of the daythough an awareness of the illusion is helpful, and allows some self-reflection as well as a greater understanding of what others are dealing with, we can’t really afford to drop the illusion altogether, or stop pretending. Cause living is so much acting. Living is all about carrying on despite the fear and weakness, carrying on through it.
Wrote mostly about academics here, cause it is something I have often thought about. But actually today’s writing began with something much more personal, much more difficult to speak and to share, and that kept me up worried much of the night – a personal insecurity of my own that arises more frequently than any other, and that many times a weak creeps up and takes over my brain.
But is there really any difference what the particular issue is for each of us? I’m successful at work when I can convince those I work with and for that I know what I’m doing, regardless of my own confidence. That act puts them at ease, gives them confidence, and builds the foundation for actual success. In academia, the writing and speaking and teaching does indeed throw ideas out there and open debate, regardless of whether the initiator has her or his own doubts. And in relationships, the act of security and strength and desirability and capacity inspires in one’s partner the confidence and faith that it takes to keep things growing stronger and closer, and makes those things true.
The long and short of it? I’m a fucking mess much of the time. Truth be told, I am pretending each and every day, as we all are. Truth be told, behind all this I am scared, and weak, and confused. But at the same time, and with no less truth, I am all the strength and confidence I can muster, too. Because there really isn’t any meaningful break between the act and reality. The act is reality. That’s the nature of my humanity, and the nature of all our humanity.
Days of muddling and survival. Days of strength and confidence. Days of fear and insecurity. Each, I suppose, is all bound up with the other. Perhaps the changes in general mood are no more than slight shifts in the balance , reactions to little things that either tip the scales to an act successful or tip the scales to stagefright. And if that’s the case….well, that’s something I can deal with.
