Mark KennedyI interviewed a young Chattanooga woman the other day – someone in her 30s – who I found mature beyond her years. She talked to me about her new job, and she said that she is relying on confidence tempered with humility to get her through.
Driving home later that day, it dawned on me that confidence and humility are the two cornerstones of wisdom, that elusive virtue we all want. As we all learn eventually, wisdom is not the raw accumulation of knowledge; it’s living with the dead certainty that you don’t know much while remaining confident that you can still muddle through.
Confidence and humility work best when they are fused together like atoms in a molecule. Too much of either and it throws off the whole chemical composition of your character. (You might even become a gas.) Face it: Nobody loves a know-it-all or a whiner.
Kids today are taught to be confident, some might say overconfident. Confidence is a by-product of self-esteem, which modern parents serve to their offspring in heaping portions. My two boys are fat on confidence.
In team sports, winning is exalted and losing is occasionally “awesome,” too. Parents apply bumper stickers to their cars to announce their progeny are “Honor Students.” At my son’s school, every child – sooner or later – receives a character award for honesty, or helpfulness, or kindness – like mini Nobel Peace Prizes. The award ceremonies, in turn, are recorded in smartphone videos that are zapped off to doting grandparents.