Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful
I want to start a support group for beautiful, intelligent, charming, [insert positive attribute here] people. Like Alcoholics Anonymous, but instead of complaining about our yearnings for tequila shots, we’ll have a safe place to rant about how difficult life can be when one is so very beautiful, intelligent, charming, etc.
Disclaimer: I don’t actually believe myself to be exceptionally exceptional in these areas. But I’m only half kidding about this idea. We spend way too much time apologizing for our successes, and prefacing any complaints with a list of reasons why we have no right to complain. We’re conditioned to attribute all our wins to luck, but we’re free to take full ownership of our failures. This is not only irrational, it’s incredibly inefficient from a conversational standpoint.
There are of course legitimate reasons to downplay successes. It’s not very nice to whine about your exhausting, vibrant dating life in front of the girl who hasn’t been asked out in over a year. Or worry over your upcoming promotion in front of a jobless friend. This is probably why pretty people tend to be friends with other pretty people, and why it’s more comfortable to date someone in your general income bracket. Walking on egg shells gets tiresome, and being in the company of “equals” means you have to downplay your attributes a little less. But we still do it. Even among my closest friends, I find myself bookending what I want to say with prefaces and addendums.*
I think this is a uniquely American problem. Ask any foreigner, and they’ll tell you that we apologize far too often, and for things that don’t merit forgiveness. Maybe it’s overcompensation for the merit-based, self-made ethos of the “American Dream.” We’re now afraid to claim our successes as our own, lest we too closely resemble a protagonist from an Ayn Rand novel.
I guess one of the things I love about the tech/Silicon Valley scene is that there’s a lot of pride, but with relatively little ego. People are super passionate about what they’re doing, and they take ownership of successes without worrying that they’re belittling someone else in the process. They’ve also learned to fail quickly, and move on.
I think we’d all be better off living life unapologetically.
*Apparently the more common plural is “addenda”…but that just looks ridiculous.
