Underrated is the word that comes to mind as I think of the propensity for how others perceive me. I don’t know what people expect, but I’m certain it’s not the vast plans my mind is coercing into place, the high tides I plan on navigating until I’ve helped every person on the planet and written every well dry until I’m left only with the punctuation on either ends of a novel.
Who control those waters? It’s me. Only me. Me.
But lately I’m feeling this way: underrated. I don’t feel that I can’t succeed, that I’m not enough–chin above the plane where it all falls short. I feel thateveryone else sees me this way. Or doesn’t see me at all. Sometimes, I’m not sure which is worse.
I never supposed to slip through a crack of being average and great. Of having to explain myself across bounds and bounds to people who will never understand. I can surprise you, all of you. I can overturn your foolish misconceptions in seconds. Stop boxing me in. Let me out.
A high school philosophy teacher once taught us about magnanimity. At the time, it was a word unfamiliar. But exciting.
To be magnanimous meant to know your worth, he explained.
Wikipedia tells me it’s the “virtue of being of great mind and heart. It encompasses, usually, a refusal to be petty, a willingness to face danger, and actions for noble purposes.”
Am I being petty to let this underrated-ness get to me? What do I have to prove anyway? I know my self worth. I know the value of my words, my mind, my body. Or maybe the resolution is to face this perception–this danger–head on. That’s my noble cause–to grasp that self worth and squeeze the hell out of it, so that maybe one day, just when it doesn’t make the least bit of difference, I won’t care about being rated at all.
Tags: magnanimity, self worth, Writing
Don’t worry about what everyone else thinks – just keep doing what you do and “it” (whatever that may be) will happen. That’s what I’m counting on anyway
Thaaaaaanks, Abbie!