Self-esteem

Self-esteem discourses have no meaning to me. Certainly, had I not passed my PhD, it would have an overwhelming meaning, but because of the way things turned out, it doesn’t. It’s like I’m safely on the other side of any nagging self-doubt, nowadays. Above and beyond this, my training is such that I don’t believe in a self that can lose or gain value on the basis of external changes. At least, that’s the way I feel. Someone can approve or disapprove of what I do, and everything will remain the same. I may experience clouds of unhappiness, or even abject misery, but fundamentally, I will not change.

I’m not sure I ever felt that I had anything to prove to anyone other than myself. I’ve never personalized my experiences to the point that I felt they constituted my essence. I’ve experienced too much change in life to engage in that sort of naivety.

I don’t think I’ve ever “worked on” myself so much as tried to find ways to indulge myself and reawaken myself. I’m looking for a project right now that will do it, but all I can come up with is sleeping in the new swag overnight, whilst it is raining.

I’ve found that I function at my best when I don’t have to think about issues that perplex me, like self esteem or identity, or other phantoms. On some fundamental level, I really don’t know what these mean, so I don’t respond effectively to others who have these concerns. If I start to question myself as to why I can’t understand these issues, I become disturbed. It seems that generally a certain amount of stoicism is a solution to these problems, at least that is what I would prescribe, but I dare not intervene in situations that I cannot grasp.

I live pretty well these days.