Forthnights

Confidence

It didn’t occur to me until my girlfriend. As we were saying goodnight over the phone, she said to me “Don’t be upset anymore ok. When you see me, smile, just like you used to.” I asked her what she meant. “Weren’t we just laughing a minute ago?” She told me for the past few months, since all of this started; I have laughed and smiled a lot less than I usually would. “We hardly go out anymore.” She told me. Yes, we don’t go out anymore because I can’t afford it, but I know in a way, we don’t go out anymore because I don’t feel like it anymore.

Its funny really, whenever my friends go out together to Bukit Bintang (that’s a popular shopping district here in KL), they seldom if ever call me out. For some reason, they know my answer would be NO. I have never been the type to go out window shopping. Bring me to a shopping mall and I’ll only want to go 2 places; Camera shop to ogle at the latest DSLR and the bookstore to read till my hearts content.

Back to my original topic, I guess when she told me I smile a lot less nowadays, it really reflected on what has been happening to me of late. In the past, I have always been type to hide how I feel inside. With my friends, they cant really guess what’s going on in my heart. You can guess my mind, but you cant guess my heart. Only when I open up and relate how I feel and what I have been through do people really see me for what I am. They say to me “I didn’t realize you have been through all of this. You don’t seem the type to come from a family with a history.” Maybe people expect those coming from broken homes to be useless bums, chain smokers, inarticulate and rowdy. For some strange reason, some also seem to think I come from a well off family (how ironic). A friend of mine asked me where I parked my car, as we were going home. I told him I don’t have a car, that I ride a bike. “I’m sorry. I though you drive.” I’m not sure what gave him that impression, but he seemed really surprised at this revelation.

But I guess there has been a crack in my little mask. A friend of mine has asked me why I looked so down the entire day. I wasn’t trying to put on some sympathy show. In fact, I was just trying to be normal. But I wasn’t in a good mood, so I was quiet most of the day, and I guess it showed. And when my girlfriend said it to me again, I though to myself “Is it really THAT obvious? Am I really THAT upset?” But just looking back at my last few posts, I tell myself “Who am I kidding. I AM upset.”

”I think you have a confidence problem.” My girlfriend tells me. That’s true. I have never been the very confident type. At my best, I was always the silent confident type, not liking to show everyone how confident I am, but quietly in my heart, I trusted myself. Some people seem to have confidence in whatever they do. I have a friend who is so confident of himself, he volunteers for everything, claims he knows everything and can learn anything, to the extent that people say he’s blowing his own trumpet. He is good at a few things, but he’s not everything. Despite people’s criticism, he has always remained confident, saying “I am somebody.” Even when people say to him “You are nobody.” Well, sad to say, I don’t have that. My own confidence has always been a result of my own judgment of my own abilities, as compared to others. In fact, I tend to underestimate myself a lot. I don’t like boasting, but I do enjoy being praised for what I feel I am good at. I have never dared claim myself to be ‘very good’ at anything, because as good as you are, there is always someone out there better than you! I guess its part of my upbringing as a kid. As Asians, we are brought up in a culture where boasting is arrogance and humility is highly regarded. Individualism is not something we are really comfy with and selling yourself is just something unheard of.

I guess that’s how it is with me. Just like many other people, whenever I received praise, I would quickly praise someone else, or make myself undeserving of that praise, as if acknowledging your superiority is a sin.

“I liked your speech very much.”

”Oh, erm, actually I didn’t write it. I just memorized it.”

It took me a long time before I came to the realization that I shouldn’t sell myself short, and that a graceful “Thank you” would be enough. But even till today, I cant stand being praised sincerely without blushing.

So it’s a struggle. To be confident, you must not be shy of what you can do, to stand up and make yourself be noticed and be counted, but to be humble means not to go around acting like you are better than others, trying to hog the lime light. That’s the problem with being a silent confident kind of person. You don’t blow your own trumpet, no one will do it for you, and no one thinks you are confident. Confident people always speak up! After all, the squeaky wheel always gets the oil. So do I have a confidence problem? (I guess a confident person would not have to ask this question because he would be confident of his own feelings. So the question itself also presents the answer, an obvious yes.) But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

I think to a certain extent, I’m not as confident as I could be. I know for a fact that I have been more confident before in my life. Confidence is not something you can maintain throughout your life. Everyone, at some point, looses confidence, and it takes constant rebuilding to regain it. I have never in my life been the type to aggressively sell myself, so I refuse to accept that confident people aren’t shy to promote themselves. I think even if I were the most confident person in the world, I would not sell myself too much. Let people judge me for who I am and what I do, and not what I say. But also to a certain extent, I am confident of myself, and this confidence comes from the little things that I believe that I am good at, like being able to speak properly or speaking up when I want to. These are things didn’t come naturally to me, and mastering them helped me. Also, coming from such a ‘colourful’ history, I know I have faced problems others only hear and read about. I know that I have been through far worst then many of my friends, and I have managed to become better than them despite the odds. It’s the subtle things like this that give me my confidence. Sure, its not like getting a Yale scholarship or being named Most Promising Youth of the year, but its enough to get me through, enough to tell me im not a spineless wimp who cant has never tasted the bitter part of life. Hey, I have tasted the ugly parts of life, and I taste it as we speak, but you’ll never see standing on top of a roof top, ready to take one final step. And that is something I can confidently say.

posted by Compulsive Blogger @ 12:00 am Comments: 0