Sophistry

We meet over lunch at this little restaurant on the water in Charleston, our table facing a wall covered from floor to ceiling with orange life jackets hung in perfect rows.  I don’t know him well, but he holds a significant position in my organization, one of those select few with a “C” in his title.  He intimidates me just a bit, but we’re among friends unwinding from a hectic conference, connecting on a personal level.  He’s telling stories about his past employment; they cause us to blush and laugh out loud at the same time. He’s human after all.

The following week he’s in my in-box, thanking my colleagues and I for allowing him to sit at the “cool kids’ table”, fulfilling, apparently, a dream he’s held on to since high school when he longed to drink his chocolate milk with the in crowd.  I couldn’t help but think when I read his words that here I was concerned about the impression I was making on him, and all the while he was worrying about how we’d receive him.

 

Seth Godin writes about the cool kids today, pulling the memory of this encounter out of the vault in my head.  The point he makes is thought provoking:  In our insatiable quest for affirmation and acceptance, we can spend a ton of time comparing ourselves to everyone else in the room. And when we do, we undoubtedly come up lacking, choosing to see only those traits we wish we possessed, forgetting about everything wonderful we do possess.  The irony is while we’re residing at the bottom of these hierarchies in our heads, we sit squarely on top of the hierarchy of another, we’re that person someone else aspires to be.

When we go looking for places to fall short, the best we can find is comfort in knowing this is a natural part of the human condition.  When we strive to transcend this game we are rewarded with something infinitely more precious:  The power to be who we’re meant to be.