Small bites

Not like them

Sometimes, it looks like I'm a pretty arrogant person. You could misinterpret the meaning of what I said, just because I wasn't apologetic about how I said it.

What makes me different from you is that I can take the critique. I can take the ridicule and the humiliation at being dead last/worst at something. I can humbly approach a table full of those who excel and completely acknowledge that they are my superior. They are faster, stronger, than I am. Be the first to admit that I might slow them down, might hold them back. If I could just sit quietly and listen - I'd try to stay out of their way.

It is this - that makes me better than you, the vast majority of people I meet. Because the majority of people I meet, can not take the humiliation, can't stomach the agony of being openly identified as being the weak link, the slowest person, prey. If I reacted the way the vast majority of others do - quick to anger, to point out the flaws of others, to place blame elsewhere to escape the scrunity, to defend myself - I'd have missed every valuable thing these folks had to teach me - some much younger than me. I wouldn't have noticed their acceptance and their praise (that I wasn't as terrible as I thought I was).

Later though, when someone else - not at this table - had blatently laying my flaws out in the harsh unforgiving light of day, going for the kill, there was a small part of me that felt shame. Shame that I couldn't grasp the concepts as fast as others. That I didn't seem to be able to keep up. That I had surpassed the limit of what I could do. And with that shame came the irrefutable truth. I may not be the fastest, but I came this far on my own. This may not be where I'm my most graceful, elegant or powerful - but I'm here. Doing what I don't do naturally, with the same folks who do.

And because it doesn't come easy - because it's painful to learn - it'll stick with me in a way that it'll never stick with them. Because they take it for granted. And when the day comes - I'll be able to do what I do naturally, powerfully, gracefully and elegantly and what I painstakingly struggled to learn to do the same way. So in the end - I'll be better because I had what it took to be worse.