Am I good enough? Does it matter? ~ daily prompt

Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.

I wish I had learned I was “good enough” earlier in life. My hubs and I discussed the topic just this morning and the differences in our upbringing. While his father was very competitive and pushed him to get involved with sports, my mom discouraged me from anything competitive.

Both tactics have pros and cons. A child being pushed too hard down a path they don’t have interest in can make them feel like a pawn. Not being pushed hard enough can make one lack the drive or necessity to do anything other than what is asked. You just let life happen to you.

In my case, my mom sometimes took it a step further. When I was about eight, I wanted to take ballet lessons. She talked me out of it.

“That’s really hard,” she said. “You not only have to know the steps, you have to move to the beat of the music.”

I find that laughable now. I love to dance, and as a bass player, I can assure you that my timing is impeccable. 😉

I can see it from her point of view, too. I was a chubby kid and not exactly the epitome of gracefulness. She most likely discouraged this simply because she thought I wouldn’t be good at it, and at worst, maybe some of the other girls would make fun of me.

I can think of several other times I wanted to try out for something. “You have to be really good,” my mom would say. She must have gotten to my older sister, too. She was six years my senior and the golden child of the family, but she used “audition” like it was a dirty word. She simply would not try out for anything unless she knew she was a shoe-in.

So what happened? I don’t know exactly. I like to attribute my later-in-life fearlessness to dropping acid*, but it could have been something else or a combination of things. I just remember having an epiphany of sorts while tripping.  I thought about life and how silly it all is. If I fail at something, who’s going to care? If I fail at something but have fun anyway or learn something, is it really a failure? Why am I so afraid of living?

Several months later, I decided to tackle my fear of heights and took a flying lesson.  When I wanted to pursue it beyond my discovery flight, I nodded politely at mom while she brought up the litany of reasons not to do it.

I did it anyway. I earned my private ticket in 1995. After that, mom never mentioned that anything was too hard for me, and more importantly,  neither did that little voice in my head.

---

*This is not an endorsement to drop acid or any other hallucinogenic. There have been some great strides in using these types of drugs for the treatment of PTSD, anxiety, and other mental maladies, but please talk to a licensed therapist before going down this path.