And these fears extend beyond me to my wife. If Kathie is very late getting home, I really have to work at not wondering if she’s stuck on the side of the road or far worse.
So where did all this fear come from?
First let me say that I don’t really know, but I have two theories and an empty page to fill, so let’s get to it.
Theory #1: “The Incident”
In 1998, I think it was, Kathie and I took a trip to Cannon Beach, Oregon. I told her that one of the things I used to love to do as a kid was climb on the rocks. Turns out I chose the wrong rocks because they gave way and I plummeted about 15 feet into four inches of water and (thankfully smooth) rocks. A couple of feet in another direction and I would have hit the jagged rocks and the damage would have been much, much worse than a broken bone in my wrist, cracked ribs, deep tissue damage to my right buttock, and bruising that created colors I've never seen before.
I limped away from that, but in many ways I think I’ve continued to limp, often overcome by the fear that little reminder of my mortality provided.
Theory #2: Not Worthy
People who barely graduated high school and who had two miserably unsuccessful years of college shouldn’t be in the position I find myself in. Content managers, communications managers, public relations managers, and, to a lesser extent, training managers really ought to have a better academic record than mine.
For the record, I’m very good at what I do, and I’ve worked damned hard to get where I am, but for the past 17 years I’ve felt like I’ve been succeeding on borrowed time. One of these days I’m going to be “outed” as someone unworthy of the success I’ve had.
You’ll notice that there’s no subject there. It’s not that I think someone is going to find me out, more like the universe will discover and then correct its mistake. This is the Icarus Syndrome: a fear that you’ll fly higher than you should, that you’ll go above your station in life, and pay the ultimate price for your hubris.
So is the reason that I’m such a chicken-shit #1 or #2? Clearly I think it’s both, and probably some other things I’m not even aware of. Life is fragile, and so are health and success. I’ve experienced some pretty close calls with loss of health and success, so . . .
I’m not saying any of this is rational, but it is real for me, and it has deeply affected the way I live my life. Maybe I am the proverbial coward who dies a thousand deaths, or maybe I’m not really unusual at all.
-Doug
[1] To be clear, my professional and financial success has been modest by the standards of most, it’s just better than I ever expected.
2 comments:
I think I have to say you aren't unusual at all. You described on the large scale what many people feel on smaller scales. I have a proposal of my own to offer in a moment: the REAL difficulty you are facing.
One of the standard for post-Ph. D. scholars is the fear that people will find out how stupid you really are. The same when you take a new faculty position and have colleagues who really will find out how stupid you are. It's like having REALLY SMART tattooed on your forehead and everyone who sees you doing dumb things sees that at the same time.
I've heard of business executives who felt the same way. To be fair, I have heard about them in books they wrote when they were no longer business executives. It think it's the hard-charging self-confident extroverts that manage not to feel that way. Neither of us is one of them.
So my solution to your problem--your REAL secret flaw--is your rationalism. People who are less committed to "things ought to make sense" than you are, live in a series of tiny little bubbles. They live as one person in one bubble and another in another bubble. That is what the Greeks meant, by the way, by the word "idiot." Idiots operated in private, where all these bubbles could be maintained, rather than in public where they could not.
"Deserving," the notion at the heart of your essay--not hubris--is a notion you a) developed early and have not changed, b) applied broadly to your life as if you don't deserve as good a wife as you have as well as not deserving the money you make, and c) have extended it time beyond any plausible statute of limitations. You call it emotional because you feel it in that mode--and you are right--but the expectation that "deservingness" attaches to the person over all the areas of his life and over all the years of his life...that is rationalism run amok.
Solution? Don't expect it to make sense. Celebrate and extend your achievements. Accept and limit your failures. Try not to emulate your father, who has come to all this wisdom way to late to really profit from it very much.
Thanks for your comment, Pop. I think there's a lot to what you're saying, and maybe this really is about "deservingness." But the difference for me is that I lack what many would consider to be a minimum requirement for the kind of success I've had--something Ph.D.s and nearly all executives can't say.
I really feel like I know what I'm good at, and I'm fairly secure in that, but none of that would matter if the people around me knew that I didn't have a college degree. That's the least I should have given what I do, and is quickly becoming the least you need to get a job doing nearly anything outside of digging ditches.
This isn't about not feeling worthy, and it's not about feeling like a fake and worrying that I'll be found out. I am an illegal alien with no papers working in a place--I mean that in the larger sense--that requires citizenship. The INS could come busting through the doors at any moment.
Okay, so that's a little dramatic. I've never lied about my status, and my resume is absolutely accurate. When I was hired I was asked about my lack of a college degree, but I think my experience made up for it. This time.
I'm working on the wisdom part, but I hold out little hope that I'll possess it in time to do anything useful with it. Hmm. Maybe I really am like my dear ol' dad after all.
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