Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Friday, May 29, 2009

I've Done a Lot of Things In My Life I'm Not Proud of

None of you out there need to be idolizing me. Listen, I know I come off like a paragon of exemplariness, and in a lot of ways, that's a truism. But that's not the whole story.

It never is.

Listen. I've done a lot of stuff I'm not proud of. Laundry. The dishes. Filled up my gas tank - I'm not proud of that. I made a photocopy of a document earlier today. Last week, I held the door for a man. I'm not proud of that.

When I was in 5th grade, I made some decisions I'm not proud of. Later on, yeah, I was proved right - but I'm still not proud. That's some kind of hypocrisy, if I was - you can't go around being revisionistically proud of things, trying to reflect that bask back into the past, just because history goes around vindicating your decisions, just because everybody crowds in after the fact acclaiming you as some kind of hero, some kind of genius.

I can't buy into that whole narrative. I can't idealize myself too much, I know the real story too well. Too many things I've done in this life, that I am not proud of. Not then, not now. That's not even all of them. That's not even a complete list.

You don't need to be idolizing me. I'm just a guy trying to get by, in a world I'm not particularly proud of.

1 comment:

Edana said...

I bought a donut the other day. Boy, was I not proud of myself then. I also can't really say I'm proud of myself for laughing out loud at this post.