The Wise Man Knows He's a Fool, And I'm Just Thoroughly Confused
The other day as I was trying to teach my 5yo-on-Saturday the finer points of weeding (the garden. As opposed to the library. This gets confusing in certain circles), I remembered how, recently, someone (I forget who) had warned me, "You know when you weed dandelions, you have to get the WHOLE ROOT, or they'll come back," and I remembered feeling slightly bewildered and a little offended that they seemed to think this was news to me. Yeah. That's basics. I've known that since I was a kid. I'm teaching that to my five year old right now. I hadn't said anything at the time, just nodded politely in my usual way, but now I wondered, as I knelt digging contentedly as I've done every spring for decades, if that was part of the problem. I DON'T really say what I know, do I?
Which makes sense, really. Especially in that situation-- is there really any point to do anything other than nod politely? But there was now a voice in my head saying, "Hey, you actually DO know a bit about gardening, don't you? You're not a beginner anymore." Sure, I'm not an expert, either. I'm open to learning more-- excited, even. But I've so internalized how utterly ignorant I am-- in every aspect of life-- that even I have started to believe that I don't know ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING. And with the amount of stuff I hold inside in public, it's no wonder if other people have no clue how much I know about things, either.
I've been turning this over in my head since then, feeling like I needed to blog it, but even now I can't quite sort it out enough to explain it. In a sense, I've always known way more than I let on. When I was a kid it was social stuff, gossip, pop culture that I absorbed silently, going unnoticed by those who whispered around me and assumed I was just naive to it all. There were a select few, in marching band, in high school, who suddenly realized EXACTLY HOW MUCH STUFF I might have written in my ever-present journals, and they viewed me in kind of amused awe/fear, and I smiled in amused wickedness, and I let the implication of my blackmail power simmer there happily. But normally, I felt a little conflicted about it. I'M NOT CLUELESS! I wanted the world to know, but at the same time, what was I going to DO? I didn't want to take PART in the gossip, or FANGIRL over the pop culture I wasn't particularly interested in (but I KNEW about it, sheez). ACADEMICS, on the other hand, I couldn't hide. I was good at taking tests. That was pretty obvious. Teachers handed out assignments, I aced them, repeat as necessary-- I KNEW stuff. And I didn't care if people knew I knew THOSE things, because they WANTED me to. That's why teachers GAVE tests. To see if we knew those things. And I did.
But adulthood-- people don't give you standardized tests anymore. Nobody's asking what I know. So I'm not offering it up. Anything. Which IS a problem, because people ARE still grading you. It's just the test is so open-ended you don't even realize you're taking it most of the time. My work evaluations, consistently, for the past seven years I've worked at this library, have been low in one area-- communication. I've gotten better about it over time-- I keep better notes, report my schedule better, the basics of what I do are on the record. But when the director sends me and the other children's/YA programming folks articles about STEM programs and even for gosh sake One Book (a program I WRITE for, for ye uninitiated), and asks if we could be doing anything like such, and my coworkers sigh and say "Oh no, I have enough stuff to do," I blink. And then I say, "Yes, I'm doing that next week/I did that last Thursday/I do that every Monday." And it occurs to me that maybe I ought to be talking my programs up more...?
The problem is, without anyone pulling what I know and can do out of me at the end of every unit, I've even started fooling MYSELF into believing that I don't know anything special. I didn't even notice it was happening-- well, I DID notice that I felt utterly incompetent, but I believed it unquestioningly. NOW I'm AWARE that, hey, my brain has been playing tricks on me, and I'm muddled trying to sort it all out. Where is the line, I ask myself, between Owning What You Know and Acknowledging That You Don't Know Everything? It isn't a line, myself replies, it's a freakin' plane, there's tons of variation on this spectrum that you can hang out in. Really? I ask myself again. I can't find the plane. When I think of what I know-- "Hey, I am highly knowledgeable about children's literature!"-- this other voice pops in and says, "But there are other people who know MORE about children's literature than you do!" and instead of accepting this as an inevitable truth and moving on with what I DO know, I use this to negate whatever I knew instead. Who am I to claim that I know ANYTHING?! So I end up paralyzed by self-doubt.* It's writer's block, but it goes beyond writing into the rest of my life. LIFE BLOCK.
But it's also cheating. Laziness. Dodging responsibility. Don't get me wrong, I don't do it CONSCIOUSLY. It's such a deeply embedded Type 9 psychological tic that I never would have found it if I hadn't been trying to sort this all out. The OBVIOUS problem is the lack of confidence in my own competence. But when I dig deeper, that lack of confidence comes from this part of me that says, "I DON'T WANT TO! I DON'T WANT TO ACCEPT THAT I HAVE THE POWER TO MAKE DECISIONS, TO ACT RESPONSIBLY, TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE! I WANT SOMEONE ELSE TO TAKE CARE OF EVERYTHING! I DON'T WANT TO BE A GROWNUP!"
But I'm NOT incompetent, and I know that very well. I have a working knowledge of many things-- WORKING knowledge. Meaning I should be able to work with it. But I won't ALLOW myself to work with it, claiming that I don't know ENOUGH because I don't know EVERYTHING. But I'm just dodging the work I'm perfectly capable of, the work I was put on this planet to accomplish, whatever that is. I know I'm dodging it even if I'm not entirely sure what I'm dodging. I'm pretending my gifts don't exist, or at least don't exist anymore (I was pretty smart back in the day...), or may exist but are meaningless and of no use to anyone. But it's an act. It's all an act because I'm afraid to face whatever Great Responsibilities might come if I acknowledge that I really DO have Great Power.
So what next? I'm not used to it. I'm not used to acknowledging that I've got Skillz. I haven't the slightest idea how to start. Heck, I still have to talk myself into WANTING to, into WANTING to be the person I'm capable of being. It's so comfortable being lazy, being invisible, letting the world just happen around me. How do you get OUT of that comfy little rut?
---
*this is an old private joke with myself. It's a line from an episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy about how snakes are never PARALYZED BY SELF-DOUBT even though they don't have legs, so I always say it in my head in a Bill Nye voice, and will use it wherever it works. Like here.
Which makes sense, really. Especially in that situation-- is there really any point to do anything other than nod politely? But there was now a voice in my head saying, "Hey, you actually DO know a bit about gardening, don't you? You're not a beginner anymore." Sure, I'm not an expert, either. I'm open to learning more-- excited, even. But I've so internalized how utterly ignorant I am-- in every aspect of life-- that even I have started to believe that I don't know ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING. And with the amount of stuff I hold inside in public, it's no wonder if other people have no clue how much I know about things, either.
I've been turning this over in my head since then, feeling like I needed to blog it, but even now I can't quite sort it out enough to explain it. In a sense, I've always known way more than I let on. When I was a kid it was social stuff, gossip, pop culture that I absorbed silently, going unnoticed by those who whispered around me and assumed I was just naive to it all. There were a select few, in marching band, in high school, who suddenly realized EXACTLY HOW MUCH STUFF I might have written in my ever-present journals, and they viewed me in kind of amused awe/fear, and I smiled in amused wickedness, and I let the implication of my blackmail power simmer there happily. But normally, I felt a little conflicted about it. I'M NOT CLUELESS! I wanted the world to know, but at the same time, what was I going to DO? I didn't want to take PART in the gossip, or FANGIRL over the pop culture I wasn't particularly interested in (but I KNEW about it, sheez). ACADEMICS, on the other hand, I couldn't hide. I was good at taking tests. That was pretty obvious. Teachers handed out assignments, I aced them, repeat as necessary-- I KNEW stuff. And I didn't care if people knew I knew THOSE things, because they WANTED me to. That's why teachers GAVE tests. To see if we knew those things. And I did.
But adulthood-- people don't give you standardized tests anymore. Nobody's asking what I know. So I'm not offering it up. Anything. Which IS a problem, because people ARE still grading you. It's just the test is so open-ended you don't even realize you're taking it most of the time. My work evaluations, consistently, for the past seven years I've worked at this library, have been low in one area-- communication. I've gotten better about it over time-- I keep better notes, report my schedule better, the basics of what I do are on the record. But when the director sends me and the other children's/YA programming folks articles about STEM programs and even for gosh sake One Book (a program I WRITE for, for ye uninitiated), and asks if we could be doing anything like such, and my coworkers sigh and say "Oh no, I have enough stuff to do," I blink. And then I say, "Yes, I'm doing that next week/I did that last Thursday/I do that every Monday." And it occurs to me that maybe I ought to be talking my programs up more...?
The problem is, without anyone pulling what I know and can do out of me at the end of every unit, I've even started fooling MYSELF into believing that I don't know anything special. I didn't even notice it was happening-- well, I DID notice that I felt utterly incompetent, but I believed it unquestioningly. NOW I'm AWARE that, hey, my brain has been playing tricks on me, and I'm muddled trying to sort it all out. Where is the line, I ask myself, between Owning What You Know and Acknowledging That You Don't Know Everything? It isn't a line, myself replies, it's a freakin' plane, there's tons of variation on this spectrum that you can hang out in. Really? I ask myself again. I can't find the plane. When I think of what I know-- "Hey, I am highly knowledgeable about children's literature!"-- this other voice pops in and says, "But there are other people who know MORE about children's literature than you do!" and instead of accepting this as an inevitable truth and moving on with what I DO know, I use this to negate whatever I knew instead. Who am I to claim that I know ANYTHING?! So I end up paralyzed by self-doubt.* It's writer's block, but it goes beyond writing into the rest of my life. LIFE BLOCK.
But it's also cheating. Laziness. Dodging responsibility. Don't get me wrong, I don't do it CONSCIOUSLY. It's such a deeply embedded Type 9 psychological tic that I never would have found it if I hadn't been trying to sort this all out. The OBVIOUS problem is the lack of confidence in my own competence. But when I dig deeper, that lack of confidence comes from this part of me that says, "I DON'T WANT TO! I DON'T WANT TO ACCEPT THAT I HAVE THE POWER TO MAKE DECISIONS, TO ACT RESPONSIBLY, TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE! I WANT SOMEONE ELSE TO TAKE CARE OF EVERYTHING! I DON'T WANT TO BE A GROWNUP!"
But I'm NOT incompetent, and I know that very well. I have a working knowledge of many things-- WORKING knowledge. Meaning I should be able to work with it. But I won't ALLOW myself to work with it, claiming that I don't know ENOUGH because I don't know EVERYTHING. But I'm just dodging the work I'm perfectly capable of, the work I was put on this planet to accomplish, whatever that is. I know I'm dodging it even if I'm not entirely sure what I'm dodging. I'm pretending my gifts don't exist, or at least don't exist anymore (I was pretty smart back in the day...), or may exist but are meaningless and of no use to anyone. But it's an act. It's all an act because I'm afraid to face whatever Great Responsibilities might come if I acknowledge that I really DO have Great Power.
So what next? I'm not used to it. I'm not used to acknowledging that I've got Skillz. I haven't the slightest idea how to start. Heck, I still have to talk myself into WANTING to, into WANTING to be the person I'm capable of being. It's so comfortable being lazy, being invisible, letting the world just happen around me. How do you get OUT of that comfy little rut?
---
*this is an old private joke with myself. It's a line from an episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy about how snakes are never PARALYZED BY SELF-DOUBT even though they don't have legs, so I always say it in my head in a Bill Nye voice, and will use it wherever it works. Like here.