neorants

Self-esteem is a strange thing. Sometimes I think that people totally misunderstand the point of having it. I believe a healthy level of self-esteem is being confident enough in your own self-worth that you can feel free to recognize the good in others. This is what we mean when we say “before you can love others, you must first love yourself.” However, just as we seem to do with so many things, more and more we take this concept and indulge in too much of a good thing.

We’ve taken self-esteem a step further, to something I’d call hyper-esteem, in fact — people who are so in love with themselves that they are incapable of perceiving someone else as worthy of love as them. We’re becoming a nation of superstars, each convinced he is the main attraction in his own reality TV show. Well, to use a phrase coined by a friend of mine from Colorado (hey, JLP!), we overestimate our own entertainment value.

I’m tired of being a bit player in everyone else’s own personal drama. I’m tired of dealing with people with delusions of grandeur so intense that they can’t recognize their weaknesses. I’m tired of insect politics. I’m tired of explaining myself to people who don’t even have the right to ask for an explanation, yet somehow think they’ve got some deep insight about what I do that nobody else has come up with yet, then enduring their puzzled stares when they can’t comprehend the explanation. And lastly, I’m tired of people talking about me behind my back, saying I’m being standoffish because I’m simply sick of it all.

Does the mere existence of this weblog make me one of the very people that I’m complaining about? Probably so. But I feel better for having gotten it off my chest.