Tonight's Entertainment.

So here is my reflection on a phenomenon that I think occurs in part due to an awful High School experience, really low self esteem, and an early departure into the real world.

In a class of 30 eighteen year olds, I shiver and stutter through a 4 minute presentation on campus safety. Delivery is great, visual aid is killer, I know the topic upside down, and I'm feelin' good. So why is there a jawbreaker in my throat? That's 8am...

By 11am I'm at work. In a conference room with 10 forty year old millionares who are successful in what they do, really important, and could potentially make me a lot of money. I then proceed to pitch a project that could cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I haven't even had my morning tea.

So I realize that TRUE: I have spent more time with 40 year old business men in my life than I have with peers, and TRUE: I am passionate about what I do and therefore more comfortable with speaking on it, and TRUE: teenagers tormented me all throughout high school, but...this is just a little too extreme to be called normal.

The room full of my peers (the eighteen year olds) are all there to learn and grow together. But for some reason, all I see and feel are 36 pairs of critical and analytical eyes, 18 brains picking apart every word I say, every hair on my head, every blemish on my skin and ever rag on my body, and one massive threat to my mental homeostasis.

Perhaps its the lack of expectancy that I feel in the room with the 40 year olds that serves to be more of a comfort. Perhaps it's that I know that they know what I'm capable of. Perhaps I'll never really put my finger on it. But what I have learned is this:

Behind each one of those faces, whether an eighteen year old face or a forty year old face, is a mind not belonging to you. They don't know your troubles, your insights, your experiences. A person is a person, and as long as you know yourself well enough to know where you stand, you won't think the person laughing is always laughing at you.

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent". Eleanor Roosevelt.

Holler

http://vimeo.com/23285699

Thorough

By the time i was 6 1/2, I had mastered the fake smile. I knew how to kindly and respectfully answer any question asked of me, and I knew to always shake a hand firmly.

I've been such a little actress that i don't know what my real smile looks like; I don't know how to portray what I really feel like. I can take on any persona that I'd like, and mood or edge that I'd like. I don't know how to be natural, and honestly I'm afraid to know at all.

Socrates' whole philsophy that one must "know thyself". This means not only having the ability to stand firm in your values and priorities, but to know your strengths and weaknesses of character, and thus be able to act on them (or not).

What if we don't know what our real weaknesses are? Or our real strengths? What if we've been convincing others of something so long that we've convinced ourselves, but it's not actually the truth?