will i ever be worthy? -- the unspooling continues... pt. 2
fear; rejection; self-doubt -- and learning to live without a safety net
okay, that was scarier than it had any right to be...
and i really didn’t anticipate that reaction… it’s weird...
maybe trying to explain it will help
as long as skies are blue
This past week, I read a cheap paperback—the literary equivalent of McDonald’s or Cheetos. I wanted a mental break from McCarthy and Gogol and everything else that I’ve been working on that you don’t know about yet. You know the kind of book I mean: a yarn with a plot so simple, you can follow it after a half-dozen mojitos sucked back in blissful sun-drenched delirium. I’m talking about the kind of mass-market paperbacks that are stacked next to the magazine racks at drug stores and supermarket counters. Books with vibrant, flashy covers sold from tables marked “Best Beach Books of 2023” and “Sizzling Hot Summer Reads.”
They won’t give you much insight into the human condition—maybe with the ironic exception of the denigrative effect of money; Gogol for the win there, I suppose—but you just might find yourself entertained enough to lose an afternoon or two.
And sometimes, that’s just what the doctor ordered.
In my case, however, it appears such a prescription was a substantial misdiagnosis.
Perhaps nostalgia explains my desire for some summer junk food—a yearning for the solace of my youth, when a bazillion calamitous climate records weren’t broken every goddamned summer—but, I think more than anything, what I wanted was a brief respite from the heady confines of Cormac McCarthy and the novel brilliance of Nikolai Gogol.
It can be exhausting brushing shoulders with giants all day, every day. These are writers who have influenced me in ways more profound than I can articulate. It becomes an immense challenge to the ego, to keep such company. I find it has the tendency to make me feel… inadequate in comparison…
(It’s difficult to imagine how I could ever come close to achieving that transcendent level of greatness.)
And so, what I thought might be a pleasant diversion—a much-needed mental break—instead, flung me headlong into an existential crisis.
Allow me to explain…
living in a material world
So, the book that I read wasn’t very good.
Superficial.
That’s the word I will forever associate with the book in question going forward. It was painfully superficial in every conceivable way. After a while, I couldn’t conceive of a single reason why it was worth reading. So I stopped. It had nothing substantial to offer, it wasn’t entertaining, it didn’t fulfill its potential, and it didn’t satisfactorily resolve any of the conflicts introduced into the narrative.
It just… wasn’t very good, okay?
‘nuff said.
and i know love leads to pain
Of course, I’ve made these types of judgements many times before, right? And, usually, it’s no biggie—life goes on. (I mean, it always stings to have wasted money on a book you don’t like, but that’s still a lesser price to pay than wasting your time reading something wholly unsatisfying.) Tastes evolve, right?
But, I’m tellin’ ya, it didn’t feel like “no biggie” this time when I decided the book simply wasn’t worth reading. This time, for whatever reason, it bugged the hell out of me that I had that reaction to the book. I didn’t want to be so thoroughly repulsed by it, so completely turned off, but every time I thought it could stand, it fell to pieces.
Judging it fundamentally unworthy of my time and attention shook me.
It took me a couple of days to figure out what the hell was happening: while reading (and judging), a fear had slithered out of the darkest recesses of my mind—a deep, existential fear—a fear of the fact that my work will also be judged... and, just maybe, that it too will be found unworthy.
my shadow’s the only one that walks beside me
It’s a scary thought.
And, if you’re not careful, it can steamroll into the belief that you’ll never be good enough—accepting that you haven’t been good enough in the past can be managed, but swallowing the lie that you will never be worthy? That’s a ticket to Hell on the Damnation Express, departure time: 6:66.
I think the fear of being judged is a particularly pernicious strain of self-doubt because it’s entirely unquantifiable. “Worth” is entirely subjective; it’s a judgement we all make independently (and without really knowing, or being able to articulate, how we do so). It’s a moving target and fool’s errand.
It’s also an unavoidable obstacle in life.
You’re going to be judged.
And—no matter which way you slice it—that’s a scary prospect.
I think the fear of being judged is a sublimation of the fear that you aren’t enough (or, that you can’t be or won’t ever be).
In a sense, this makes it just another manifestation of the typical self-doubts we all struggle with from time to time: Am I enough? Am I loveable? Does everybody see through me? Will I ever feel better? Will I ever feel in control?
These fears are totally ordinary—not that that makes experiencing them any less uncomfortable—and, therefore, they can be overcome.
Is that enough to make the fear of being judged a little less palpable?
I don’t know. I guess I would say that I’d like to find out.
i took a walk around the world to ease my troubled mind
I don’t have an answer for how to resolve the fear of being judged or the fear of not being enough. I doubt very much that such answers exist. I suspect that we all *simply* have to find our own way of circumventing it. (Not that there’s anything simple about it).
Because there’s no escaping these fears:
My work will be judged. Some will inevitably find it unworthy. This is the price of admission. And that’s okay… but it’s still scary as hell.
I suppose all you can do is try to find the inner strength necessary to overcome your fear and doubt.
This might require help, like a conversation with a close friend, romantic partner, or mentor, to achieve. Or, perhaps, like me, you’ll find it by isolating in quiet contemplation and trying to work through why in the hell you feel so shitty about not liking a stupid book about dragons.
So I guess the answer is that you have to have faith in yourself—and believe that, one day, that faith will be rewarded.
You have to kill the Self that harboured those damnable fears and—as Joseph Campbell says in The Hero with a Thousand Faces— emerge from the Underworld of Self-Doubt having been tried, discovering “for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere supporting [you].” And you will have to repeat this cycle of death and rebirth countless times, as you continue your “superhuman passage” through the wonderful complexity of this maze we call “life.”
Deep down, I obviously believe that there’s always room for growth; for learning from my failures and mistakes; for counterbalancing my less-helpful tendencies. I don’t know how else to account for what keeps me going whenever I’m beset by doubt, which, if I’m being brutally honest, is pretty much all the time.
So—even if you don’t believe it right now—it might be worth telling yourself that you are good enough; that your work is truly worth something; and that whatever happens, will happen—for there’s no other way for things to have happened—so it all will be okay in the end.
The present moment—right now—this… it’s all we’ve got; it’s much too precious to waste on fear.
sending strength and love,
c.d.