Confidence isn’t the same as courage, although having the former helps to embody the latter. My friend, I’ll call him Sam, recently moved to San Francisco from Idaho, before which he lived in Chicago where we first met. We were friends for a while in Chicago before he moved to pursue his Master’s degree. When he left he had a yard sale to get rid of most of his things. What he was able to fit in his car is what he took with him. I remember feeling envious of his position – oh, to shed my worldly possessions and just take off to start new somewhere else far away. I thought him courageous. He nonchalantly sold and gave away his things that day, spread them across the tree-lawn in the front of his apartment building and let go of it all with ease. But more than that, with gratitude. This, I think, is confidence. Knowing that your value is not what you own.
So when I took him out on the night of his birthday last week, it wasn’t an exercise in confidence I was to teach him, as he called it, but one in courage. Feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Sam has trouble with that. We went to a bar where I told him it was his mission to give away his phone number to an attractive woman. He was nervous even before we walked through the door. When we arrived, we sat down at a table and talked just to ease his mind. He asked me about times when I’ve given my phone number to strangers, how did I approach them? I told him some stories, emphasizing that the point is the act itself, not what comes after. “It’s an exercise in confidence,” I said. His face looked like he just slammed his finger in a door.
Just when I worried I was getting nowhere with him, he had the most brilliant idea. There was a table nearby with a woman and two men. Sam was attracted to the woman, and after watching them interact for a minute, it was clear that she wasn’t with either of the men. His idea was: Let’s walk up and make them a proposition. We’ll say, “One of us is attracted to one of you. We’re going to sit with you for a few minutes and join your conversation. Then we’ll go away for a few minutes while you discuss. If you guess correctly, the attracted party will give out his or her phone number. If not, we’ll thank you for playing along and bid you a good evening.”
I loved it. I was quite impressed that he would come up with it, given how nervous he was. We did it. Sam pitched it perfectly and the three invited us to sit. I sat beside one of the two men, the more attractive one. The woman looked a little bored and smug, an air of arrogance hung around her. After general introductions about who we were and what we do, the woman asked me what I was writing for fiction. I explained it while Sam struck up a conversation with the other man. While the woman seemed to tire of my answer about a minute in and turned to join the other conversation, the man to my left was fascinated. In fact, he seemed to be hanging on my words. When I finished he said, “Wow, I envy you your passion. I can see it when you talk about it. Makes me wish I did whatever it is that my passion is.”
I asked him what that was and he said he didn’t know. He’s a corporate attorney and the only thing he gets excited about in his work is winning. I asked him what he was passionate about as a kid and he said acting and singing. Also, he loved animals. “But I gave it all up before I learned what my real passion was,” he said. It was an honest and sad answer and it endeared me to him.
The few minutes were up so we left their table to let them deliberate. Sam seemed down while I felt exhilarated. I asked him what was wrong and he said he was disappointed by the woman and didn’t even want to give her his number anymore. I told him we could change it and pretend that it was me who wanted to give my number to the man that I talked to, which seemed to cheer him up a bit. But then again, I told him, they might not guess either scenario and then neither of us would have to give a number. When we stopped back at the table they said they each had a different guess. Sam told them that they had to come to a consensus, so we left them alone a few minutes longer.
When we returned, the less attractive man said: “It’s more of a hope than a real guess, but we think it’s you (pointing to me) attracted to her (pointing to the smug woman).” Then he added, “in the ballroom with the candlestick.” We all laughed. I looked at her and she smirked at me, crossed her arms and leaned back looking so sure of herself. I looked back at the man and said, “No, that’s not it.” Her face faltered and she looked genuinely disappointed, even surprised for a moment, then went back to looking indifferent. We thanked them, told them to have a great night, and left.
Sam still had his number in his pocket, so we went to another bar and I coaxed him to give it to the cute bartender, which he did after drinking a second beer, and it went well. She was kind and even flirtatious to him in response. He left feeling elated.
I’ve been attending a regular weekly meditation meeting at the Zen Center, which consists of about 30 minutes of sitting meditation broken into two segments, 20 minutes and 10 minutes. Between these is a talk on a topic related to recovery and/ or Buddhism. Recently, the topic was fear and the speaker talked about how it arises from a sense of an inherent lack of value. She went on to talk about how this can sometimes lead one to steal, lie, and abuse substances, but I rested on the original idea. In the silence of the meditation, I paid attention.
My parents raised me in a way that allowed me to be exactly who and what I am and feel accepted and loved as whatever that was. It gave me a foundation for confidence. As an adult, I believe I have inherent value that no human interaction, no loss of things or relationships can diminish. It’s what allows me to risk chance. If I fail or get rejected, I’m still me, undiminished. I think that everybody has confidence; it’s a birthright. Even if it’s been obscured, it’s in there and it will come forward to move you along at key moments in your life, like when Sam moved to Idaho from Chicago. When he’s able to remember that and rest there, courage comes easily. Fear has no power in the presence of true confidence. It’s nothing but vapor, a flimsy veil with false images rippling across the surface.
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