Misunderstanding

When I was a small boy, we lived in Oklahoma. If I was five at the time, it hadn't been for long. My memories of the incident are few, but strong enough to properly convey the incident.

I remember that it was a wedding and all the participants were marching along with excitement. I held them each in my hand and marched them manually down the aisle with great enthusiasm. Only when my mother shouted at me in remonstrance did I have the first clue that I had done something wrong. The wedding-goers were cylindrical and rectangular blocks, and the aisle was the flat, wooden arm of a reclining chair. Each animated step had left the mark of its bearer in the polished wood of the chair. I probably tried to explain my position--and that in toddler vernacular--which might have been solid but for the power-distance between us. In any case, she emerged the victor and the wedding was over.

For years, whenever I would sit in that chair, I'd remember the incident as I fingered the angular and circular indentations. To this day, I feel the tinge of injustice. The obvious question is "Why worry your little head over a matter of such little consequence?" To me... the consequence is greater than what lies on the surface. The real consequence was never the immediate punishment or the bewildered shame I felt; it was the conveyance of the notion that "fair" is a relative term... that the one in power is right by virtue of his power alone.

I still have a hard time wrapping my head around that concept. Now, my Momma's the sweetest lady I know and I'll be the first to say it... but what does that say about the incident at-hand? What does that say about mankind?

Confidence

Is confidence saying "I don't care what anybody thinks, ever!"?

Some might say that's arrogance. I'd say it's an outsider's view on the topic. Every newcomer to a new thing sees the big parts and confidently extrapolates them to encompass the whole thing...yet when he has gotten a closer look, he realizes that what he thought it was bares a sparse resemblance to what it actually is. Some of us naturally gravitate toward the subject and understand its nuances instinctively... the rest make do with tools at their disposal.

Many times, when I am being 'confident', I am playing the part of a confident man intellectually. I do not normally feel it in my bones and it does not ooze from my pores... it is an affectation. I am doing something that I think ought to be done. And there it is: for me, it is an intellectual endeavor. Of course, from time to time, I am genuinely confident but on the whole, it is something I put on to the benefit of social grace.

And in these practices, I make enormous blunders such as the opening of this post: "I don't care what anybody thinks, ever!" It is an egregious inflation of the confident personality. Yet, to my lay-mind, it seems like a logical extension of the philosophy. And so it goes... perhaps someday I will understand.