Self-Doubt's Day Out

The struggle for the betterment of one’s self is an American obsession made manifest by our gym memberships and fad diets, our cosmetics surgeries, our “sliming” or “shaping” clothes, and our perpetual need to possess the best, the brightest, the sleekest, the newest “it.” Like any good American, I have my own sense of lacking, my personal gnawing, nagging voice that reminds me that I am not, nor will I ever be, the best that I can be.

Perhaps because I’m lucky enough to come from a family of waifs (or so they were until the dreaded four-oh), perhaps because no one in my bloodline (to the best of my knowledge) has ever possessed any kind of athletic ability or perhaps because four years of studying mysticism has finally generated an apathy towards the physical, my body image is only a mild source of insecurity. With the exception of my flabby arms and inability to throw a decent punch (two insecurities which can be directly traced back to my two week Battlestar Galactica binge), I am fine with my body. Sure I want slimmer legs and a tighter ass, but am I willing to give up my unhealthy, dormant life style to attain them? Not on your life. (Larger breasts on the other hand I could theoretically purchase whilst maintaining my sloth, which is perhaps why out of anything physical, I am most insecure about my boobs.)

Nearly all of my insecurities are intellectual. I blame this in part on where I am from, and the constant need to overcome the “Deliverance Land” stereotype. I blame it in part on the three boys I grew up with, all of which are brilliant, two of which will spend the rest of their lives in Academia because, by their own admission, “the ignorance of the real world is frightening.” Like me, none of these boys were good at sports, but they spent fourth grade recess reading about the Napoleonic Wars, Che Guevara, and Communist Russia. (This is an actual example. They thought it would make them better Risk players.) The thirteen years from kindergarten to high school graduation were spent with constant attempts to mentally match my three genius pseudo-brothers. I was the better musician (though my musical trivia knowledge was lacking), but that was my one small victory.

In any case, the intellectual competition of those years has had a lingering effect on me. To this day, I still have to have seen that movie, read that book, listened to that band before them, and by extension the general “you.” This is why I force myself to read such annoying sites as Pitchfork Media, or why having watched The Wire before any of those boys made me feel superior. It is not a part of my self that I am proud of, but it’s there. And like any nagging insecurity, it pops up in the oddest ways.

My recent weeks have been a smorgasbord of events I am not proud of and my self, by which I mean my own and others' image of me, is an unfamiliar and off-putting thing. The nagging, gnawing voice to be better, faster, stronger is rearing it’s nagging, ugly face, and while some would take that self-doubt and alleviate it with a good trip to the gym, the church, or Radio Shack, I took my self-doubt and went to the used book store.

I’m not sure at what point I started equating self-worth with literature. Maybe because my parents house is 1/3 living space and 2/3 bookshelves. Maybe because all my favorite people are English teachers. All I know is, I judge people by what they read. Even though I know it’s purely superficial, I am impressed by people who have carefully tended, well-stocked book shelves in their homes, or at least an active library membership. My favorite philosophy professor, already cute due to his wacky sense of humor and well-toned arms, became the academic Brad Pitt when I learned his undergrad degree was in “Classical Language and Literature.” But yesterday, after Carrie and Self-Doubt’s Day Out, I had a mental breakdown after I realized how few of the books on the “Classics” shelf I have actually read.

Mind you, I am not a total literature snob. If you like “Twilight” or “The DaVinici Code,” my opinion of you will greatly decrease, but I read “Wicked” and thought it was brilliant. I am an avid supporter of popular writing. I got into a verbal fight with one of my favorite English professors when she said The Beats should never be studied in a “serious literature class.” But deep, deep down I am very insecure about the fact that to me “War and Peace” is an Audrey Hepburn movie and “The Odyssey” was a Wishbone episode. So periodically, usually whenever my personal life is blowing up, I go to the book store and feel bad about myself.

Don’t get me wrong, I am always reading, but the book on the nightstand next to my bed is usually a good indication of how things are going in my life. When I’m happy, there’s the book that a friend told me I would like, such as “Wicked” or “The Life of Pi” which I happily read despite their “Oprah’s Book Club” status. When I’m happy but a little bored, I read something with a little more prestige but with a high entertainment value, ergo my Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy phase. As things get worse, I turn to Marquez or Salinger, and feel the small swelling of pride that comes from “100 Years of Solitude” and “Catcher in the Rye” and their respectable place in the established canon of the literary elite. Because, to me, deeply embedded in the neurosis of my self is that idea that reading books, and not more books but “better” books, will make me a better person.

And so yesterday, after an hour in the bookstore congratulating myself as I passed the Faulkner, Vonnegut or Orwell, whilst mentally degrading myself before the Steinbeck, I finally settled on Joyce and Tolstoy, two authors with several years on my “Need to Read” list, two authors that can offer my stumbling sense of self-worth a well-respected leg on which to stand.

And so to conclude the lesson is this: I may not be a good person, and I may not be doing anything to improve the things that may make me a bad person, but I am reading “Ulysses,” in my own neurotic attempt to become a better person.