I have a bizarre, unholy terror of arrogance. That is to say I am terrified of becoming arrogant. I’m not really afraid of arrogant people, although they do generally annoy the hell out of me. I’m starting to think that I never really been able to grasp the difference between arrogance and confidence. The dictionary says that arrogance is “an overbearing pride-making claims or pretensions to superior importance or rights.” And confidence is “belief in oneself and one’s powers or abilities.” So there is a difference, but I hope it makes sense when I say that although I understand these definitions in my brain, I have never been able to put them into a good use in my heart. It seems like I always see something about how your boss will give promotions to the employee with confidence, everyone wants to be friends with people with the most confidence, and in animals as well as in men fetching members of most species tend to seek population with the suitor with the most confidence. Now I don’t have anything against actual, real life confidence, I’m sure that it can come in handy sometimes. For Instance, I will be willing to bet that if a person is doing gymnastics, it is a better idea to have the attitude of “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can” instead of “I know I can’t, I know I can’t, I know I can’t.”
Confidence is more complicated than that though. When you think about it, confidence is advertising in its most primitive form. The way you carry yourself creates people’s expectations. For instance, if you walk down the street a certain way (confidently), people will think “wow that person looks confident. He must have everything together, and must be strong, solid, and capable.” Conversely, if you walk down the street with a scent of in-confidence, people will think “wow, that person looks like a drag. He must be negative, boring, and-oh never mind, let’s just stop paying any attention to him.” Well OK, that’s fine, but what happens after you display an air of confidence? This is what freaks me out the most, setting up a image that I then have to live up to because a person who fails is one thing, but a person who fails after he was bragging his brains out is quite another. If you say to people “hey man, I’m going to do an excellent, beautiful painting.” People will stand around and say “this better be good.” But on the other hand, if you say “I’m going to do a painting, but you’re probably not going to want to see it because I can’t paint worth dog shit.” The worst that could happen is people will wait until you’re done and say “it’s really not that bad.”
But there is another aspect to this. I feel like confidence is an actual hindrance to me. This is going to sound weird to say, but I almost feel like I have got a little custodian living in my brain somewhere, and whenever I say or do anything that isn't totally saturated with humility, he will cause me to screw up royally so I get too embarrassed and never act arrogant again. I have a little half-assed theory that this principle works something like this. The custodian in your head has been monitoring your emotional outlook. If this has been consisted for an extended period of time, he just gets very used to it. However, if he suddenly receives signals that are contrary to that sad outlook, he doesn't know how to handle it. He totally freaks out and does whatever he can to sabotage them so he can go back to what he perceives to be a “normal" state of mind. Now I’m not saying this state of mind cannot eventually be changed, but speaking from experience, your brain can be a stubborn asshole about these things sometimes. But there is one last thing, let’s say you’ve finally decided that you are sick of being in the arena of the “non-confident.” You learn to talk the talk. You learn to walk the walk. You are embraced and accepted by the people, the mentality, and the lifestyle that you thought you always wanted. Do you think it’s possible that it will go through your mind: “you know something, I feel like an impostor, and what’s more, if these “confident” people actually think I’m confident, then they’re really easily fooled.
