Not good enough….

It is very natural for all of us to feel from time to time, we are not good enough….I get assaulted by these feelings of self doubt more than you think. Maybe it’s my inferiority complex.

And whenever self doubt appears right before me. I always tell myself the people who come across as more confident and assured of themselves probably feel the same as well.

The only difference between me and them is they know how to suppress this feelings of self doubt better and that is all there is to it.

As I said, it’s very natural, so don’t beat yourself up over nothing.

—————————————————————————

‘There are times when I am in the company of landowners who tower over me like mountain ranges. Some of them own lands that are so vast. You could start from the center and walk from East to West or North to South for days on end and still see no sign of their boundaries – it’s a geography that’s so big that you can’t even wrap your head around it – and there I am with my veggie patch wondering to myself how the hell am I going to get up there. I tell myself. It’s just so bloody impossible. I don’t even know where to start, it’s like standing before a smooth rock face with no foothold or even the slightest indentation. The texture is like wet polished marble and it just goes right up beyond the uppereaches into the clouds…..so high that it even hurts my eyes whenever I try to make out the summit.

At these moments, I feel so very small. So small that I even believe the sum of all my life’s work could probably fit into a postage stamp and that’s really just another way of saying, it all really just amounts to a big diffusion of energy amounting to a big nothing and maybe I should just chuck it all in and disappear like a cloud.

Sometimes I feel a wave of anger sweeping right across me. My jaws tighten and my breathing becomes scraggy and suddenly everything around me just sharpens to a point where even breathing becomes painful…it’s like breathing needles… and at that moment it’s as if, I’ve managed to step right out of skin and there I am looking at these people who are all larger than life while I am three feet shorter and I say to myself, ‘Life is not fucking fair. I am the world’s greatest farmer. I can grow anything. I bet, I could even grow carrots on the moon. But since I don’t have the contacts and network, it’s hard to get a sizable acrerage to even prove my point…life is just not fair.’

That’s when I usually see HIM passing me by in the corner of my eye. A ghost from the past. He’s always in his flared ridding breeches, mirror polished knee high boots. He’s always wearing that silly shoulder holstered revolver across his open collar khaki shirt with his hair swept back.

Usually when he appears I try to slip away, but I can never get very far. As no matter how fast I run, he’s always there. Ahead of me. Always giving me that sardonic look of condescending understanding like he knows I’ve just shitted in my pants…..I am not good enough.

It’s been this way ever since I could remember stretching all the way back to Africa. We always end up facing each other sitting in one dark corner over a bottle when everyone has gone back home. Usually we just drink quietly. We seldom speak. There’s no need too. Not when a cluck of the tongue, raised eye brow or curl of the lips can convey just as well the length of a full sentence. Mostly single malt whiskey. From time to time he pauses and peers at me and I say, ‘whaaaat?’ He chuckles and we go back to our drinks again. Each of us lost in our own thoughts.

But you know what…. I always feel better when he’s around. I don’t know why, it’s as if suddenly everything doesn’t seem so impossible any longer. From time to time, I steal glances at him. I never dare look him squarely in the face – never, there’s something unsettling about him. Maybe it’s the peculiar way he crimps the middle of his cigarettes before he lights them. A trick he learnt from the legionaires in the Sahara…comes in handy during a sandstorm – perhaps its the way he looks out at the world. A desolate wasteland beneath a Godless sky, steely white where nothing can thrive….except maybe a certain type of man who looks out at the world with eyes of defiance….No…no…let us not go there tonight… to that place in the distant past. Let us just say, I know he can always be counted to come through…to punch a hole and slip right thru it….let us just say, I always feel much better when he’s around. I know he’s got his faults and all. I don’t know why. But I do.’