Reverence

 Growing up average taught me to yield. Whenever you're unsure of your expertise, entrust a more competent person to help or take on the task entirely. I'm a jack of many, not all, trades. I'm fairly decent at many things but I do not know if I'd call myself a master of any. I'm normally obsessed with conversations that entail a person 'nerding out' about something they know a lot on or are obsessed with. A friend of mine once described how he gauged knowledge and intellect in others; "If I can learn anything from you, it means you're smart.". It's a fair metric in my opinion because. If you're proficient enough at doing something that you can teach it, it automatically means that you're knowledgeable to some degree on it. If you can dumb down complexities to a stranger to them you're intelligent enough to bridge the gap between ignorance/ incompetence and knowledge.

I grew up a clumsy, careless and inattentive boy. Subject to reprimand by all who oversaw me at home and in school as you'd expect. I spent most of my time as a child and teenager in my head. I have a very colorful imagination. So much so that I could have conversations with myself through and about basically anything. I observe a lot but I think I tend to miss tiny details sometimes to my detriment. Good observations lead to pattern recognition which ultimately leads to almost predictive superpowers. I remember the first time I observed weather patterns. Shamefully it was in my early 20s when I realized that nearly every October in my life I had been rained on terribly at least once. I also realized that immediately after the March - April rains our Guava and Orange trees would flower and fruit. It may seem trivial but to me it was like unlocking a secret of the universe.

I spend most of my time in my head. I remember in school I'd always have trouble concentrating when the teacher was teaching. I'd visualize something in my head, something I liked. I love war machinery in general, those who know me know to avoid the topic entirely lest I bore them to death with the details. So I'd always make sure I had a book or paper that I could draw warplanes or tiny doodle battles on. Even know when I find my old exercise books, the fringes and extra pages are littered with these drawings. Every drawing representing a time I disassociated and began bringing the world in my head to life, giving it physical presence. 

I distinctly remember once drawing a 'Nganya' in high-school and thinking nothing of it but an expression of a part of Nairobi culture I loved. People who saw it seemed fascinated at how good it looked considering I had no reference drawing. That portrait disappeared and I thought nothing of it, as I said I'm pretty careless, I lose stuff all the time. I think in my previous life I was Buddhist because I seemingly have no attachment to material possessions and my apathy to loss of them. One day, months later I was visiting a friend's dorm and behold! In the middle of the central hallway, my nganya portrait. Untampered with, preserved in a place where it commanded attention. 

My art was revered by someone, so much so that they thought to display it. I've never really known how to respond to outright displays and expressions of respect. I am normally dumbfounded. Perhaps that speaks on some intrinsic ail or short-coming I do not know of or ignore. Once I was speaking to someone and they told me they get so much knowledge from me and I found it absolutely HILARIOUS. How? Me? Knowledge? It cannot be. I am not smart by any metric, I barely scraped by my education, have never created anything of much importance to anybody, how then does someone use me and wisdom in the same breath unironically? 

I grew up a clumsy, careless and aloof boy. Subject to reprimand by most people who spent extended amounts of time with me. One of my desk-mates used to bicker with me about my disorganization so much the class had to intervene during every 'class baraza'. I lost so many school sweaters as a child that I became immune to the cold (mostly immune). I used to have so much trouble concentrating on my homework my father had to warn my teachers to always make sure I did my homework otherwise I never would. I grew up being told to emulate certain blueprints, being compared to those more present, more careful than me. I automatically used to think of myself as less than everybody who could keep a sweater for a whole academic year, or show up with books what weren't collapsing. I knew I was nothing to pay attention to or learn from and I embraced it. Everything became inconsequential to me. My answers were in bad handwriting (an understatement) but, they were correct and in the grand scheme of thing that was all that mattered.

It feels so weird being in a position where people look to you for a crucial decision or a way forward either for yourself or others. Responsibility is a funny load to be ladened with. Especially growing up the way I did, with the knowledge that it you've always been reprimanded and compared for elements of your personality. It's weird looking in a mirror at an imperfect being, and hearing your contemporaries respect you or someone younger than you saying they think you're one of the coolest people they know. I'll leave you with an excerpt from a conversation I had with a good friend of mine:

You see imposter syndrome is like using outdated evidence to judge a current version of yourself. You’re looking at past performances, especially failure, and treating them as fixed proof of your limits. You're assuming that you haven’t changed, that you can't, that you're stuck in your ways. In reality, skills, awareness, and context are constantly changing but your brain prefers familiar data, even if it’s incomplete or biased.

Negative self-talk then is that emotional consequence of that assumption. If you believe “this is all I am,” then the mind tries to protect you by rehearsing failure, criticizing you, and lowering expectations not because it’s accurate, but because it thinks it’s safer than being wrong again

You're intimidating that version of yourself stuck in the cycle to try and force change through pressure, but it ends up reinforcing the loop instead.