I am missing the arrogance of my stupid youth. When did I get so embarrassed of making a fool of myself? Why wasn’t I ashamed of myself then?
The lack of shame usually works for my college students, in that they dare to say and do all kinds of productive things in my classes. It can also, of course, work against them, like when they blithely ask me to define the central terms of the course two days before the end of the semester. But mostly it’s an enabling lack of shame that I find inspiring. If they’re so willing to trust that their honesty and efforts will be rewarded, why am I not able to do the same?
I would say that cynicism about other people’s motives comes with age and experiences of failure, but my childhood was full of cruelty and embarrassment. If I learned anything from being a child, it was that I was too ugly and too weird to be loved, and that my motivations would always be misread. I found there was so much I didn’t understand and couldn’t do, no matter how much effort I put into it.
And then there was that magical age when no failure was enough to shame me. I got C’s in courses I worked hard in. I was rejected and betrayed by people I loved. But it didn’t get to me–didn’t change my basic assumption that I was fine.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve lost this usefully arrogant delusion. It worries me that people think ill of me, or are irritated by my personality. I soften myself, quiet myself, try not to make such a fool of myself. I stop myself from saying what I want to say, even to people I love.
My fantasy when I was young was that I would hit my peak around 45. At 45, I’d know myself, and be smart and kind and honest all the time. I’d wear my hair gray and put on comfortable shoes and be beautiful, with the peace that comes from having negotiated with all my limitations.
At 30, I find I have a long way to go. 30 is the new 12. Did I say something stupid? Does he think I’m ugly? Why doesn’t she want to be my friend? Maybe I should buy some new clothes. Maybe I should apologize. Maybe I should shut up.
It’s awkward to realize, as an adult, when I’ve never been more intelligent, mature, or able than I am now, that I lack the basic resources to try to do things that I had as a dumb college student. I like looking forward to that person I want to be at 45, but more often I look back fondly on that stupid, reckless, joyful girl I was at 19.
I was really, really scared of making a fool of myself when I was in high school and college. (Not that being scared that way kept me from looking like a fool; but it did keep me from taking a lot of risks I think I would have been better off for taking.) I’m still pretty self-conscious I think but dramatically less so than when I was 20 years old.
This is an interesting post but almost the direct opposite of my experience. Not unlike MK, my junior high and high school (and even college) years were crippling–I was too embarrassed and afraid to do much of anything, for fear of seeming uncool (which I was, of course, by virtue of being so afraid). I was the kid who sat in the back of the class and never said a word, too worried that I’d say something stupid. It wasn’t until grad school, really until I started teaching (actually, a few semesters after I started), that I finally got over that (more or less)… (Hmm, also, AWB, my experiences hanging out with you have always left me thinking about how composed and confident you seem. Interesting.)
I’m taking an improv class right now, and the absolute hardest thing is trying not to care whether or not I look like an idiot. Even in a class where everyone’s doing the same thing, where I’ll never see the people again, and where the whole point is to put yourself out on a limb, I still want to look cool. It’s such a hard habit to break.
FWIW, I’m much more comfortable with myself at 44 (soon 45!) than I was at 30. Much of that has to do with deciding to stop trying to be somebody I didn’t really want to be — an academic. It’s not like life is perfect now. I am still not fully doing what I want to do, but at least I know that I’m not wasting my time trying to fit into an institution for which I’m not cut out.
For me, self-consciousness and self-doubt in social relations have generally been separate from self-consciousness and self-doubt in academic settings. When I was younger, I was often quite paralyzed in social situations, even with friends. This has gotten better, although I’d like to be less self-conscious with people. (Like the song says, “Try to be more assured, try to be more right there/Try to be less uptight, try to be more aware.”)
But! In academic or intellectual settings, I’ve almost never had a problem with this. I’ve gotten over a lot of the intellectual hubris of youth (when I was ten or so, a friend and I were absolutely convinced we could build a rocket that could put a satellite in orbit), but I still find myself in situations like, say, arguing economics with a senior IMF economist (and at some point looking down and realizing I’ve just run off the cliff like Wiley Coyote). I’d say there’s been a pronounced mellowing of my intellectual goals and self-assessments as I’ve gotten older, but I’ve got a certain self-confidence in those kinds of pursuits that I really value.
God, Dave, that is so stupid.
Whatever.
[barricades door, curls up into fetal position, rocks and cries]
Oops. Hmmm… how to bring him back? I know!
Dave, I think the BP oil spill isn’t that big of a deal! And we should probably stay in Iraq and Afghanistan for a couple hundred years! Oh, and Yo La Tengo are a bunch of hack “musicians”!
Like Dave I marvel at the divide between my paralyzing personal insecurity and my overreaching professional hubris. But I’m not sure that they’re really that different — perhaps it’s just that one’s hyperactive social coping mechanisms have a lot more room to spin wildly in the public sphere than in more intimate spaces, where they tend to crash into someone all too quickly.
My parents, who watch a lot of public access TV, saw me the other day on a panel with the State Supreme Court and asked me if I’m still always the class clown. Maybe it’s the tension of being a natural introvert who’s called upon to play an extrovert; I can usually pull it off on the public stage, but privately it can be self defeating.
It’s funny, but I tend to be just fine in situations with people I don’t know well and in high-pressure academic settings like conferences. In fact, it’s only then when I feel that intense stupid-young-person’s arrogance. Oddly, it’s in much more intimate settings that I’ve become painfully self-conscious, even with close friends. I’m getting over my “phase,” I think, but the past year has been very hard.
I think crippling social anxiety eases a little in one’s thirties. That is the case for me, anyway. At the age of 36, I can say I simply don’t care about the same stuff. It is a great boon. For instance, cooking a meal for a couple of friends of mine, one of whom is a trained chef. EEK, would it be okay? I thought. Then I though, ‘Ah, feck it. They’re my friends. And if they are rude enough not to appreciate the effort, they can stick it up their jumpers.’ And it was fine. I even told them my thought processes. People are your friends for a reason, good reason, one hopes and expects.
I was just reading a bit of memoir by Eduardo Galeano that made me think of this post — Galeano has been participating, in Montevideo, in a sixth-grade class course in reading novels and meeting authors (I don’t know if sixth grade means the same thing in Uruguay as here — the girl he is talking to sounds more like a high-school kid): “One of the students, who had come to the capital from a village lost in the countryside, stayed after chatting with me. She told me that before, she had not spoken one word, and laughed when she explained that her problem now was not being able to shut up. She told me she was in love with the teacher, that she loooooooved him, because he had shown her how to lose her fear of being mistaken.”
I loved this post. As someone who is closer to 45 than 19, I can attest to the fact that social anxiety does get better with age. It’s not so much that you don’t care what people think anymore, you just are in a better position to discern what and whom to care about. And that in turn frees you to be reckless and joyful again.
Sometimes I think my unconcious has a merciful habit of packing my fears largely into corners which I can then just avoid. One kind of fear is concentrated in flying, and I just don’t get on planes right now. The social kind of fear is (well, not 100% discretely) pushed aside into dancing, the one common social situation that automatically triggers that primal fear of everyone laughing and pointing in slow motion. If I’ve had a lot to drink or am with people I adore, I can act like a normal person about this, briefly…Anyway I guess the point is I’ve always hoped not to be one of those people who lives primarily motivated by fear, so I’m glad that big chunks of anxiety have been compartmentalized without any conscious effort.
(But I was much more self-conscious as a kid, I think. Adulthood is so much better, and I never understand the pining for youth, except maybe insofar as it would be nice not to pay for housing.)