I keep secrets

It's interesting, the things I don't mention or can't find the time to mention. It's nearly always good things, like starting yoga teacher training and teaching my first yoga class. I decided I was being stupid about not saying anything, and needed to announce all of this to the world (which, these days, means Facebook).

The thing is, I hate narcissists. You know who I mean. The people who have to have everything be about them. Think of someone making a speech that steals the spotlight from the guest of honor, the person who shows off on the dance floor, or butts into every conversation with their opinion or personal experience, no matter how irrelevant. The person who just has to tell you a story that seems designed to impress or convey the teller's importance.

Nicolas Bernard Lépicié [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I am someone who routinely fails to be impressed. You know the owner of this coffee shop? Sure, but you still pay full price. You once sold T-shirts at that performer's show? How does that make you closer to him?

So when I have something to brag about, I fail to do so. I get so tired of social media being a brag-fest: look at my cute significant other, baby, degree, new job... So tired of it that I fail to see it as a tool for sharing information. So tired of comparing my struggles, about which I know every detail, to everyone else's highlights.

So I'm quiet. I don't ask for attention. And, not surprisingly, I don't get it.

But look what happens when I do.

To reframe bragging as sharing good news, I have to accept that people genuinely do want to hear good news and consider the idea that people succeed in groups. I'm not entirely sure that this is true, or what it looks like.

It also requires seeing things I do as success, which is perhaps the biggest challenge for me. It just feels like the things I do are the things I do. I don't generally attach any particular value to them.

I do, however, attach value to the things other people do, that I have not done.

It does make me wonder about how I am seen by others, and if what they see is more or less accurate (or differently accurate) than what I see.

Not coincidentally:

Thanks so much for volunteering your time last Thursday, I know we all really enjoyed the class! After you left Mr. S--- said it was the best class so far, because it was more challenging!