December 13, 2013
Finally, I am able to introduce you to the last essay of this series! If you have not read Learning to Read and Write: Part 1 and/or Learning to Read and Write: Part 2, or just want to refresh (I’m sorry it took so long to get this piece out,) please follow the links to the first two posts.
The Story
Once upon a time…
“Get out!” was the loud cry, unpanicked, but urgently asserted. Phillip Norbrun looked up from his lap, where he has been meticulously mending a patron’s boot, to see a solitary man on horseback galloping at full stride up the dusty road. As he raced past, nothing stood out of the ordinary -brown cloak, light saddle bags, cheap boots, and on a common mount being pushed much too hard- except for his urgency. There were never any exigencies in Willows Meadow, and no one ever acted in much haste. Phillip watched curiously, and somewhat disconcerted, as the stranger became smaller and smaller, and a new rider became larger and larger. Then another, and another, and finally he made out the town smith, Mason Pulbon. Just before Master Pulbon had reached Phillip’s shop, he pulled sharply on the reins, twisting his mare around. With the rise of his arm, a flourish of dust rose violently from the ground sweeping back up the path, and in its tide dismounted a rider Phillip had not seen there a moment before. Master Pulbon brandished a sword, the likes of which Phillip had never seen made, and struck it through the air as if across the downed man’s torso. The rider, again, disappeared from the world. “Phillip, escape!” was all he shouted before whipping around once more, kicking his boots to race away on his grey.
Phillip looked around, quickly, frenzied, and afraid. No one else came, and the other townsfolk seem blind, deaf, and dumb to the whole affair. He calmed a little. “Who were those men?” he called to Isaac Lithe, his closest neighbor. “What men?” was the reply, and Phillip forced himself to consider the fact that he may be going mad. It had seemed so real, the sight that only he saw. Still in the absence of town collaboration and consciences of any juncture, Phillip was more frightened to leave than to stay. He looked back to the boot in his lap, and then up to the spot where the man had been knocked to the street- invisible among the invisible. At that moment Phillip Norbrun walked calmly into is shop, gathered a few supplies, and without looking about his townsfolk, unhitched his mare, and rode swiftly out of Willows Meadow. He did not look back; there was nothing to there see.
The Tale
We are constantly telling ourselves stories. Like the parents of our subconscious, we tell ourselves bedtime stories to ease our minds or excite our ambitions. We tell ourselves, it will all be alright, when we worry, and, I look like hot-damn, when we see that bombshell eyeing us from across the room. But the tale is not just a story you tell yourself. It is much more.
The stories we tell ourselves often have a similar purpose. They are the method by which we adjust our perception from what first flashes into our minds to what we would like it to be. Afraid of a situation? Tell yourself there is nothing to be afraid of. Did anything change in the world? Nothing but your perception of it. Whatever there was that seemed at first worth fearing is still there, and to the same extent. However your perception has changed, and you now “realize” that it was never worth the fear you allotted it.
Actually choosing to believe something or behave a particular way is foreign to many people. Mostly, our beliefs are passively formed by what we see or are told without much interference from us. We give little willful thought to the effects of how a belief might impact us on its own. People shy away from the idea of drastically, and forcibly altering their own worldview. They see choosing to believe something for its own sake as ignoring reality. However, we take this medicine in small doses everyday! Did that lady in the supermarket give me a dirty look when Timmy started crying? No, she just looked up at the sound to make sure everything was ok. Sometimes we tell stories to make us feel better, but sometimes we do it to reaffirm our assumptions without any evidence. Did that driver just cut me off? I bet she’s on her cell phone too- so irresponsible! We do it without even thinking. However, if the average person is asked to think about it, and decide to believe or think a certain way, (s)he often decides that that is fake, phony, and just not based in reality.
Well that is exactly what I would like to see you do. I want you to tell yourself the story of confidence.
Confidence can be brought on in several ways. It can be brought on by past events. It can be a learned attitude, a reaction to the realization that you have done something like this before. Whether due to your talent or just the ‘way things work,’ things ended favorably, and therefore this time it will be the same. It is the confidence I got from the childhood task of learning to read upside down, and reading better because of it. It is the confidence the street magician has in his slight-of-hand from seeing his tricks succeed. Then, sometimes confidence can be brought on by encouragement from others. They tel you you can succeed, or that outcomes will end a particular way. We seek this out, and even prompt our friends, You think I’ll probably get the job, right? Or lastly, it can be brought on by decision.
The first two are great, but they are unreliable. If they happen it is very fortunate. However sometimes, events in our experiences just go badly. Sometimes, friends just are not there to say the exactly right thing at the exactly right time, no matter how much we prod them. Then we must use the third option. Decide to have confidence.
People do not like this option. “It’s not real!” they counter, as if the first two were. As if just because something happened one way in the past it will most certainly happen the same way in the future. As if that comforting friend is right, just because they are not you! Sure, either may tilt the odds a little one way or another, but I assert that the amount of confidence we take from those odds is still very out of balance with the amount of uncertainty in the situation. Still, we take confidence from our past and our friends… and we should! Human beings need confidence. We need it to be happy, to ward off the fear and insecurity of uncertainty, and to find the courage live the lives we want. We should take confidence from whatever source willing to give it to us, and when they do not, we must give it to ourselves.
People need confidence most, perhaps, when we have the least reason to have it. It is when we are trying to succeed, when history does not look optimistic, and our friends just peer out at us, hopeful, but through one grimaced eye, that we need confidence the most. We need confidence in ourselves. That is when we, most of all, must decide to have confidence. We tell ourselves a story, and just like looking at the world upside down, just like letting hard tasks become easy, and challenging easy events to become hard, we change our perspective and decide what will be. Decide to be confident in yourself, for the times that you are all you have. That is when you will need confidence, and you will have it with you.
People often have it backwards, thinking first they need to see something happen, and then they can believe. It is wrong. It is backwards. It needs turned upside down. It is too easy. It needs made difficult. Believe. Dream. Know it, and be confident in your ideas. Then you will see them come to be. You will make them come to be!
Confidence in any form may be irrational, but it is rational to have confidence because without it great things will never happen. Even if you must use the very simple but very difficult method of deciding to have confidence, it is rational to do so.
The goal has never been to see the world in a different way or to see it more clearly. It has not been to ease life, or motivate achievement. Those are tools- means to an end. Even confidence is just a tool to furnish the goal. The goal is to write. The goal is to recreate perspective so that we can create our own lives- lives that are not lived, but made. A life that is written to experience the things we want to experience. A life engineered and created to be the way we want.
The tale is a story of escape. It is a story about seeing that which no one else sees, and that which no one would believe you if you told them. Complacency and apathy are common place. Ordinary is what is just good enough. However, while the world may not see urgency, the tale does. The tale is about seeing the invisible among the invisible. The tale is seeing past the stories that we tell ourselves silently, and using them. The tale is not just a story you tell yourself- it is the story you live! It is your life, and it is you. The tale is the dream.
Venture to Dream my friends!
-Michael Speck
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