Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

The Hours…and hours and hours and hours

Since You Asked, by Cary Tennis, I’m a high-school dropout in law school — I feel like an impostor! | Salon Life
I’m about to graduate from law school and take the bar exam, and I have no self-confidence. I’m not simply in need of a pep talk; I have a profound lack of self-worth in terms of my academic and professional abilities and it’s driving me crazy. To summarize my strange dilemma: I fear both failure and success.

I’m remembering now why I quit reading salon.com. It’s because of the vast number of bits they waste on whingeing of the sort found in this letter to their advice columnist, Cary Tennis.

Do take the time to read the entire thing. Only then will the true mean-spiritedness of my reply make sense. Here it is:

You, young man, are an insufferable boob.

Allow me to summarize in one short paragraph what took you pages to accomplish:

“Look how special I am! I’m a rebel — but smart, really REALLY smart! And misunderstood! Damn those Catholic school nazis! They didn’t appreciate my specialness. But I’m special alright. And a really REALLY deep thinker. AND! I feel things much more deeply than other people, too. Because I’m so special! Oh, woe is me! How can a super-special and smart and deep-feeling person such as myself possibly survive in a world where I’m expected to…you know…work for a living?”

To make matters worse, Cary Tennis then goes on, for far too many paragraphs himself, reinforcing this nitwit’s inflated sense of self worth.

Sigh.

Here’s what the guy needed to hear — perhaps accompanied by a swift smack upside the head.

Wecome to the real world, chum. Everything you’re feeling has already been felt by thousands of law students before you. You are not unique. You are not special. You’re just another person who’s worried about passing, worried about making a living, worried about paying his bills. Get over it already. Whether you succeed or you screw up, either way you’ll have plenty of company. Just do the best you can and deal with the consequences — whatever they are — once they’re manifest. There’s no point in freaking out about the unknown.

Gee. And it only took me a single paragraph to answer the guy. Sometimes I think Cary Tennis must get paid by the word.

Anyway, this whole episode reminded me of a movie I recently watched. I got it from Netflix. It was The Hours — that exercise in depression starring Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf. The movie annoyed me but I was having a hard time putting my finger on exactly why.

Now I’ve got it.

Like the letter on salon.com, The Hours struck me as legitimizing a sort of self-centeredness. Yes, yes… Virginia Woolf really did, apparently, have a serious mental disorder that resulted in her suicide. I’m not talking about that kind of thing. What I’m talking about are people who are essentially healthy but who can’t quite come to grips with the idea that their own thoughts and feelings aren’t especially different from what other people have thought and felt. They’re all about:

“Look at me! Look at me! I have deep feelings. I feeeeel things! Deeply! No one understands me! Because of my depth. My deep feelings (deeper than other people’s!) have separated me from the rest of humanity! I’m so alone! But deeply intelligent!”

Sigh.

I do understand that many (most?) young people go through this kind of thing as a stage. I certainly did. Oh my… I was so misunderstood! So profoundly..um…deep. But I grew out of it. Alas, a fair number of adults seem never to grow out of this kind of self absorption. And that really is what it’s all about, I think.

I can understand why people don’t want to let go of it. If you no longer think of yourself as special — what have you got? You’re just average! You’re like everyone else!!! How depressing! No, no, no. They refuse to accept it. Here’s the problem, though. When you refuse to accept that other people have the same depth of feeling and thought that you do, you close yourself off from learning anything from them. And that’s just stupid.

I think it’s about psychological maturity. I think it’s about self-actualization.

Well, that’s what I think.