It’s So Obvious When You See It

The Difference Between Confidence and Arrogance.

Dear Friend,

There’s a world of difference between confidence and arrogance.

This morning, as I sit, images present themselves. Scenes that took place decades ago. Conjuring up the past.

I’m nineteen. I’ve left home. I’m living in student accommodation in a suburb of Sheffield. I am blessed with youth, but I don’t know it. The rooms are sparse and connected by wide echoey corridors. I think I know it all, but I don’t even know myself.

I’ve always had something of a swagger to my walk. Especially when I feel happy. It’s a joyous thing for me to move.

In this memory fragment, I’m sashaying down the corridor. At the end of the hall the door to one of the rooms is open and the occupants are home. Why so shy, awkward? This should be easy. Just walk past. Maybe say hi. Nod. Start a conversation. Or pretend you haven’t seen anyone, rapt in thought. Aloof.

Familiar agony.

I go for saying hi and powering on past. There’s a girl in the door frame, I don’t know her name. She waits until I’ve past. I hear her voice like a depth charge to the coral reef of my fragile teenage self.

“Who does he think he is?”

The withering sting as my bones collapse. The swagger, jelly sloshing, directionless. How little it took to pull the plug, all of that bravado and posturing running out of me, staining the thin institutional carpet.

A few seconds of experience, recorded. Replayed now decades later. The girl, most likely will have no recollection of the event. Even of she did her memory of it is unlikely to match.

One thing that’s obvious to me now is that self confidence played no part at all in the exchange.

Confidence in what?

The false self forms around these fragments of remembered experience. It must make itself out of something. Of itself it has no being. Hence the fragility of our imagined self.

False self confidence. The idea of being more than, better than, superior to some imagined other. Our social media platforms are awash with it. A biblical flood.

What remains when we let go of images?

Stillness emerges.

Confidence is quiet.

No need to shout or cajole, win the acquiescence of the other. No need to brag or justify. It is kind also, life being confusing, messy, astonishing, ugly and beautiful all at once, humility comes into play.

Who here has never put a foot wrong? Stumbled at the edges or stepping confidently forward, found nothing but thin air. We take our falls.

Humbled we rise.

Strength comes to us.

I am not the images I hold of myself. Images are thoughts. I am not my thoughts.

I am something else.

The consciousness in which the images appear.

That is always present.

Images change.

It remains.

It’s so obvious when you see it.

People think it’s something epic, grand, sweeping.

It’s not.

Who ever heard of an arrogant saint?

I imagine what it would have been like to accompany Jesus in the dust. No golden domes or giant statues, not even the word Christian. Just a man. One gone beyond images. Humble. Present.

The biblical splendour, pomp and ceremony. Velvet, gold and precious jewels. Divine rulers, kings and queens. The wars. Killing in the name of.

Nothing to do with it. All of it temporary. All will pass.

What remains is holy.

You and I we are that.

Till tomorrow

Love

Mikey