I’m tendering a long-winded account of a client’s case to Jessica, who’s listening as though I stood before her in a lecture hall.  Her eyes light; she’s asking sharp, pertinent questions, and making keen observations about the dynamic interplay between our client and his ex-spouse.  Then out of the blue she says something complimentary about me and I am suddenly six again, feeling inadequate, inept, and inane.

A brief conversation ensues about whether I am, or am not, brilliant.  Jessica propounds the positive and I stubbornly argue the converse.  Her frustration with me increases as she tries to convince me that I’m accomplished and more than capable while I insist that neither are true.  And suddenly I find myself saying, That’s the problem with being told as a child that I could do anything I want. When I failed, I concluded that I was defective.  Like, if my Mom thought I could do anything I wanted to do, and I couldn’t, what did that make me? 

Jessica wants me to believe that I’m wonderful.  I try.  I listen to her and then say:  I wish my mother would have told me not that I could do whatever I wanted to do, but that what mattered was the effort. That it was okay if I didn’t accomplish exactly what I set out to do, as long as I made an honest attempt.

And the dawn breaks.  That’s it, of course.  My mother thought that she was giving me wings with which to soar.  She thought that by telling me that I had no  limits, she would encourage me to reach as far as my arms would stretch.  But instead — for whatever reason — I believed that my inability to do that which I set out to do reflected my fundamental lack of worth.

She meant well, did my mother.  The only things I asked to do which she  refused to let me try were those for which we had no money — and there were many — and dance class.  I don’t think you can be a ballerina, she told me, though she left it to me to figure out why.  Having concluded that every time I fell short, I evidenced complete incompetence and thus unworthiness, I suspect that I blamed myself for my prospective inability to dance, too.

With a brief nod in the direction of those (and I know of two) who think I should never blog about myself, I offer this conclusion: After sixty years of feeling absolutely worthless because I could not, in fact, do whatever I wanted to do, I’m giving myself permission to change my values.  Henceforth, I’m only grading myself on effort.  As for the results of my effort, well, let the chips fall where they might.

Daybreak over Lake Michigan, at Epworth in Ludington, Michigan.