Arrogance

Photo by Glamhag

I can’t remember a time in my life when I haven’t been accused of being arrogant. From my perspective, except for a few years in my mid-20s, it has been an unfair label. As a kid, I was just a shy, introverted, somewhat nerdy, outcast. Being born with facial deformities doesn’t necessarily endear one to others. Kids don’t just ostracize, they are downright mean. Like most, I have no desire to repeat my childhood.

I was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palette. My surgeon told my parents that it was one of the worst he’d seen, and he should know – Dr. Verner V. Lindgren was one of the finest facial plastic surgeons in the country.  We were fortunate that he worked out of OHSU in Portland. I had my first surgery within weeks of my birth, and several more during the rest of my life.  Although, as a kid, I didn’t see anything abnormal about all this. My parents and family loved me deeply, and I lived a rich life – at least until the age of five.

I remember being at the local school with my best friend Phillip Long. We were on our bikes when four older boys approached us and started asking me about my lip and nose.  At first it was friendly banter, but soon it turned into teasing, ridicule, and outright bullying.  Phillip and I were both caught off-guard.  We both stood there in fear as they called me “flat-nose” and other assorted names.  That afternoon was a turning point in my life.  For the first time, I knew I was different.  I pulled back and withdrew from others.

“Some people have scars on the inside, and some have scars on the outside. We all have scars.” ~my parents

Kids are cruel towards those who are different.  When they get a reaction, they are like sharks who smell blood.  The more the teased, or bullied, withdraw, cry, or react with anger, the more the other kids pile on.  I learned to live a life where I knew I would be picked last in sports, where other kids would go out of their way to not be seen near me, and where they made a huge scene if they had to work on a project with me.  I was “unclean.” I remember whole classrooms ganging up to make sure I was the loser in a game.  It wasn’t just my imagination, there really was nothing done about bullying in the 60s.

By the time I entered high school, I had come to expect that girls wouldn’t want to be my friend – let alone “like” me. I learned to entertain myself and avoid situations where I would be rejected.  Actually, if it wasn’t for my brother – my one true childhood friend – I may not have learned what friendship was.  He is one person in my life who truly doesn’t see the defect, but just sees me.  I will be forever grateful for him in my life.

Image by interplast via Flickr

But it was also in my teen years that I first began to hear the aloof and arrogant labels from others. I didn’t really understand the criticism, and I didn’t really spend much time dwelling on it then – I was just trying to survive.  Later in life, however, I began to understand where those labels came from.

Because I had learned to withdraw and be self-sufficient, emotionally, and socially, people saw me as aloof – which simply means to be “removed or distant either physically or emotionally.”  That I was – distant, and removed – I mean.  But I wasn’t arrogant.  I didn’t see myself as “exaggerating or disposed to exaggerate one’s own worth or importance often by an overbearing manner.”  I was just avoiding danger – emotional danger.  There is a big difference – but sometimes people confuse the two terms.

After a failed marriage and painful divorce, I attempted my first reinvention of myself.  I decided that the shy, withdrawn, nerdy, socially-awkward me wasn’t working.  Life was not working out the way I thought it would, so I knew I had to make some changes.  So, without fanfare, but with much gusto, I charged ahead towards the new me.  And, I have to admit, it was fun for awhile.

I remember walking into the day room of the fire station I worked at. Well, it was more of a strut really.  As far as I was concerned, I believed I had the world by the balls. I’d like to say that I found a good balance between timidity and arrogance – but that would be revisionist history.  I’d like to say that I achieved self-discovery and healing.  I’d like to say, that I chose good tools to achieve good mental health, but that too would be a lie.  I had become what people had labeled me.  I was arrogant and cocky.

There’s something about working in a male-dominated environment that encourages this too. A fire officer that I knew once suggested that the way to be successful in the fire service was to become an “a**hole.”  I took his advice, but being the overachiever that I am, I wanted to be the best. And this one afternoon, as I strutted into the day room, one of my co-workers jumped up from his chair and gave it to me.  Lacking any humility, or decency, or self-respect, I took the chair.  Yep, I had arrived.  I was officially an asshole jerk!

I wish I could say this was an isolated case, but that too would be a lie.  I had gone from one extreme to the other.

“I know there’s a balance, ‘cuz I see it when I swing past.” ~John Mellencamp

Sometimes it seems like we just swing from one extreme to the other. Like the pendulum, we swing, without ever stopping at that balance point of stability. Through therapy, self-medication, and thoughtful introspection – guided by some great books – I came to see myself as no more inferior than the next guy.  In fact, the emotional scars were deeper than the surgery scars, and I was learning to let those go.  As Confucius once said, “To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.” So, I began to let go. I began to forgive.

More therapy and less self-medication would have been good. More thoughtful meditation and prayer would have been helpful too.  I do have to admit that there was some self-satisfaction in being the big dog.  The uniform, the attitude, and being really good at my job – it was a nice change from who I used to be.  But it wears pretty thin after awhile.  Like the definition says above, arrogance is just an “exaggeration of one’s self worth or importance, in an overbearing way.”

Photo by Steve Wilhelm

I’ve spent the last 20+ years trying to unlearn some of that arrogance. In the process, I’ve learned to be confident, self-assured, and socially aware. After a few more reinventions, I’ve learned how to be assertive, without being aggressive.  I’m still a little nerdy, and geeky, if the truth were known, but I’ve learned to downplay that in social situations.  Like most, I still have my moments of self-doubt and emotional withdrawal, but for the most part, I deal with that pretty well too.  I am driven, and I like to be right, so I still get labeled as arrogant now and then.  But I’ve learned to let go of the name-calling and bullying.

I can’t let other people’s labels influence my self-awareness, direction, or vision.  Those have to be guided by an internal moral compass.  That isn’t to say that I don’t pay attention to people’s comments.  Who can’t learn from what others say about us?  But I don’t let that influence my core values or set me on a path of self-loathing, introversion – or to the other extreme, cocky self-importance.

Finding the balance, that is key.  I can’t do it on my own.  My pendulum would continue to swing from one crazy extreme to the other if it weren’t for gravity.  Gravity, at the center of my life, causes my internal pendulum to swing less wildly, and without the extremes of my youth.  The more I let that gravity have influence in my life, the more my pendulum finds a better center of balance.

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