In Praise of Insecurity

by Lucy S.

The longer I study literature in academia and try hard to write well - and then just read the multitude of things that pull me into them, for moments or for the duration - the more confused I get about how to write what I mean to write, and how to do that well.  And now, having written that, I'm not even sure if that's true, and truth is a vital element in what I'm reaching for.

I don't know yet exactly what this post will be about.  But a friend came over with her spouse and two kids last night, and at one point, she said something about how it is when you explain yourself to some people - the way they take that as weakness. And I said something like, "Yes! That's so true!  There are some people who, if you talk that way - they don't just see it as you being open and honest; they see it as if you don't know what you're doing."  She agreed, and we talked about this some more.

There are people who express no self-doubt, who go through their days acting oh so sure of themselves, when they are often the very people who could use a healthy dose of self-interrogation and even overt insecurity (rather than the inverted kind)  for a change. It's easy to be secure in your ideas when you don't let any new information or relationships in far enough to challenge what you thought you knew and believed and felt for so long.  Or I've also seen people instantly don a new set of practices and beliefs and feelings within a day or two - not so different than if you went out with someone and they proposed marriage on the second date - and I have to wonder how true their new convictions run when they never even have to struggle with it all for some time to think it through from a multitude of angles, and let it seep in to discover what they really come to feel about it.  They simplify what isn't simple at all.

Well, but some people might say that I'm simplifying this whole security / insecurity question.  You don't have to be secure about your ideas, they might say; the point is to be secure about your core self.  Or the point is to love yourself, and carry yourself with dignity. That sounds pretty appealing.  But what does it mean, beyond the abstraction of words, to be secure about your "core self"?  Who is that core self?  The subconscious bank of all that has happened to us so far?  If so, how do we be secure about that self?  Your physical animation?  Your body? Your face? Your habits?  Maybe it's your relationships.  I feel like there's something to this, but I'm just trying to figure out what.  I can't just say it's you "in your totality" because that would include some things that change, and so they wouldn't be "core."

The second concept - loving yourself and carrying yourself with dignity - seems more solid. But some of that may be a veneer.  I do love myself, in a way at least somewhat akin to how I love my kids now - and how I loved them when they were little and needed to be taken care of.  Or it's akin to how I loved my grandmother, who at times also needed some physical help or some help keeping her apartment clean enough.  It's not entirely the same, of course; nothing is the same as our relationship with our own selves. But I don't continually berate myself as an idiot or loser or any other title.  I've had times when I thought these things about myself - and that is different than how I think of people I love.  But when we say or think these things about ourselves, it isn't some pronouncement of WHO WE ARE, period.  Doesn't it mean: I'm worried that I'm a loser because this or that awful thing happened to me, or, please tell me that I'm not an idiot, or, I like and respect this person, and they seem to see something wrong with me, and I'm doubting myself, because what if they're right?

And sometimes they are right. There's no foolproof formula on this. I wrote in the last post about a family member telling her dad that she'd recently met a 26 year old sister whom she hadn't known existed until lately, and how he reacted to this by trying to sum her up as being a certain "way," by being a "brat" (meaning, to his grown daughter, 'you've always been nothing but a brat and you still are').  (And by telling her "fuck you" and that he didn't want anything to do with her anymore.) He was all wrong in his summations and his response, and they said far more about him than they did about her.  But I know one reason she wanted to tell me and other people about what he said is because she so badly needed to hear from us that her father's assessment of her and rejection of her were wrong and awful.  And she was right when she told him that he's going to end up alone by the time he's old, because of his cruelty.Her father has always loved himself too much and worried about his own ego more than about his own growth or about how he affects anyone else.  (Or maybe he's always worshiped himself too much - and I'll get into this worship issue soon.)

But she was right to need people to affirm something far different about her than what her father had said she was, because this has been pounded into her for too much of her life.  It would have added insult to injury to expect her to somehow just know on all levels of her consciousness that he was wrong, and to reject her some more for being too needy or not having enough "dignity" to tell no one about this.  People who think this either don't understand how devastating these things are or they have handled them by putting up barricades and calling those barricades "dignity."  I'm glad if they haven't experienced these assaults on their psyches. Or I can empathize with their barricade strategies for protecting themselves if they have. But they can really hurt someone who's struggling to construct a healthier concept of themselves by resisting the reductive summations of someone else - they can hurt that person if in some sense they slip in their own message that yes, indeed, there is something wrong with her, because if there wasn't, why would she even need to turn to anyone for affirmation?

This post is making me think of two parts in a couple of old Simpsons episodes. One is when Troy McClure mentions his book called Get Confident, Stupid!  The other is when Marge (the mom, for those who have somehow never seen Simpsons) tells Lisa (her daughter) that you don't need anyone else to know you're cool, and Lisa tells her that of course you need other people to say you're cool in order to actually be cool.

This brings me to the worship issue. If you don't need anyone to tell you you're cool, or if you don't need to be told that the grand summation of you does not at all equal "a brat" after your parents have beat it into you (literally and metaphorically), then maybe you're relating to yourself similarly to your idea (or other people's idea) of God.  With God, we're never supposed to question His rules, plans, or Being.  We may be wrong, but He never is. I'm not going to veer into a theological discussion here, but I just want to ask, is this  really a healthy or honest way to see ourselves?  Is it conducive to growth?

I am honestly amazed at how many people seem so sure of themselves and their rightness. Does it occur to them that just as every single person they know sometimes is behaving poorly or is the one who doesn't grasp a situation well or is being too selfish or manifesting any other flaw - that maybe, just MAYBE, they might be wrong about themselves or about some of their ideas and ways of living?

I remember reading some of the French feminists arguing that women have a different way of communicating, that it is more circular than linear, and that if it doesn't make sense to men or people who have imbibed patriarchal norms, that doesn't mean it's deficient and inferior, that it may even be better, because it isn't too hasty to race to simplistic conclusions.  The circular communication not only explores more, but relishes each moment for its own intrinsic value.

And then at my Orientation for teaching this coming fall, a grad student presented her research on the different styles of writing often seen in students coming from other countries and other writing traditions. Again, there was the circular approach, and various zigzagging ones. The thesis was not always stated anywhere in the beginning.  Sometimes, it had to be discovered by writing, and the reader was allowed to experience the same process of discovery.

I believe all this, but I wouldn't essentialize it too much.  Patriarchy - the authority of the one all-knowing and powerful father (or anyone taking on the role), dominating those who are trained to be and forced to be subservient - does have a long history of being enacted by males. And that relentless linearity of imperialism rolling over other people like an inevitable carpet - to paraphrase Devon Mehesuah in American Indians: Stereotypes and Realities (Clarity International, 1996) - is pretty bound to dominant U.S. ideas and practices.  But we are never reduced to who we are by a gender or by a nationality.  Many ways and identities move within us. And I have known very linear women and very circular men, and the idea of how a woman or man is supposed to be and act is so constructed and variable. And there is no way to get at any of these things reductively.  And there are even times to get to the point!  ("The house is on fire!")

But so much of the time, the relationship itself IS the point.  If being with people, and fusing with them as best as we can, behind our inevitable barricades of 'myself' and 'yourself', doesn't matter - if this is just a means to some end, what is that end? And what DOES matter, in that case?  I mean, yes, we may be working to create or learn together, or to change the world into something far more just for the majority - and far more enjoyable - but these are also our lives, right now.

And any relationship worth a damn is going to involve insecurity. We have to pull down the barricades to get close to people.  We have to pull them down to even get close to ourselves, if by our "selves" we mean the subconscious us - the massive iceberg under the surface.  And we have to pull them down to grow and to create anything really amazing. We have to take chances, and let people through, and let ourselves out.

One friend wrote her dissertation interrogating the hyper-focus on security in the political realm.  She wrote about how this goal continues to endanger and harm so many.  What has that kind of security ever done for people except keep them on adversarial terms?

I am and no doubt will always be insecure. The barricades are always broken and permeable. Whatever security I get, I get from loving the people I love, and them loving me, and living with joy and anger and fear and intense curiosity, and all of those mixed up all the time.  Or if we're going to be secure, how about a form of it that paradoxically emerges from the deep care for one another that gives us the freedom to be insecure?