An article I read recently got me thinking. Although it is a religious tract, my thoughts turned to my own personal struggles, nothing religious. The article is about the human mix that we all are, both the good and the bad. The article suggests that when we are at our best we are “saints who know ourselves to be sinners.” (A Study Guide for the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation, United Church of Christ, 2017, p. 21)
I reflected on how difficult it has been for me to learn this truth of being a mix of positive and negative. In my life, I inflicted these states on myself. I spent a lot of time feeling that I didn’t have much to offer. I was stuck much of the time in low self-esteem. This attitude held me in believing that I should not try for much because I would fail or be inadequate. On the other hand, on some occasions, I would get uppity, and think I would be great at that! If only people knew of my skills, I would simply be able to ace this project, job, or role. I believed that I knew just what should be done. For many years, I alternated between these two poles although I spent much more time in the painful place of self-doubt and perpetual hesitation.
Neither of these two attitudes of mine were accurate and certainly neither were about being either a saint or a sinner. However, as the quote above infers, I needed to become simultaneously conscious of both my skills and capabilities and my faults and deficits. The trick is to keep both in awareness. It took me a long time, and much work, therapy, life experiences, and education, but I have achieved a sense of equilibrium. I realized that my negative self-attitude was connected to my puffed up self-attitude. One compensated for the other. I could only be totally down for so long and only totally up for so long. When I became aware of this, my self-perception began to even out. I gradually became, to create a paraphrase of the quote, a capable person who knows myself to be limited.
A word captures this; humble. This definition of the word explicates what I mean, “not proud or arrogant, modest” (Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd Ed. 2001) Here is an example of what I mean. In the past I would shy away from submitting one of my paintings to a proposed show, sure that I would be rejected. Or in contrast, I was sure that my painting would be considered brilliant and readily accepted. And today, I submit a painting knowing that I have done my best and that it might be accepted or rejected.
Now to work on the saint part of me!