Am I arrogant?

Plus how we perpetuate our fears

Hello, and thank you for reading The Honesty Box. Today, I’m writing about arrogance - and how judging other people can sometimes be a reflection on ourselves.

The other day, someone at my coworking place asked how work was going. “Busy,” I said, which is the stock answer. “Peaks and troughs?” he asked. “No troughs really,” I said. “Show off,” he said, smiling.

This chat got me thinking. Was I showing off about how much work I have? Do I need taking down a peg or two? And the worst thing: am I arrogant?

Arrogance… I hate arrogance. Someone who has a swagger, fist bumps everyone, cuts over other people in meetings, pushes their way to the front of the bar, thinks they’re god’s gift to the world, talks loudly, makes grand gestures and seems to have a supreme confidence in themselves and their ideas over anyone else’s. A superiority complex.

In complaining about other people’s behaviour, she was unaware of how she might be creating it.

As a freelance writer, the reality is there are peaks and troughs, and it’s sometimes hard to negotiate the quieter patches. A gap in work can create a worry about paying the bills, or a concern about not having enough to do, but of course showing that feeling could have made me seem weak, unwanted or struggling, three things I’d argue no one would want the outside world to see.

I’m lucky in that since becoming self-employed six years ago, I haven’t had many troughs. Maybe if I was more confident in myself, perhaps I would have been able to go along with the joke more easily.

Whenever I see arrogant behaviour, I usually try to see through it to the insecurity behind the bluster, but until I told my coworking colleague that troughs are rare, I never thought arrogance would be a word I’d apply to myself. Behind my “no troughs” comment is an insecurity, a fear of being seen for who I really am: someone who is sometimes scared of being inferior.

A wise person called David once told me that the traits we dislike in other people are actually the same traits we object to in ourselves – but can’t see – and I think there’s a truth in that. And the people who are judgemental of others probably scrutinise themselves, me included.

“There is nothing more humiliating to me than my own desires,” CJ Hauser, from her essay The Crane Wife.

On holiday a couple of years ago, I got chatting to an artist living in the town I was staying in and a few days later we met for a coffee. She seemed friendly, but after an hour I realised I was the one asking all the questions and listening to what she had to say. She barely knew anything about me beyond my name – what I did, whether I was holidaying or lived there, where I was from. In the same breath, she also complained that she hadn’t found her “tribe” because she felt that people rejected her.

Not being asked anything about myself didn’t make me warm to her and I left feeling unfulfilled. I would have thought twice about meeting up again and I could see how her sense of rejection was potentially self-perpetuating - in complaining about other people’s behaviour, she was unaware of how she might be creating it. If you believe you’re a victim in life, anything negative that happens seems like proof.

Thinking about this person in a kinder way, I’ve realised that it’s very hard to see traits in yourself, and it’s also difficult to change your own behaviour, because we all do what feels natural to us.

But back to the question, am I arrogant? I’m probably overthinking this (quelle surprise!). Maybe there’s a streak of it in me, but at least I’m aware of it now. Next time I’ll take the joke better, and respond in a more authentic way.

Things I like

To need things from others makes you weak

Don’t worry, I don’t actually believe that needing things makes you weak, and I’m paraphrasing a line from CJ Hauser’s devastating and incredible essay The Crane Wife, in which she details breaking up with her fiancé. Separations are not uncommon, but what makes this piece touch a nerve is that Hauser let herself tolerate being treated badly, from telling herself it was OK for her boyfriend to stick a Post-It note saying ‘Birthday’ onto a card for her so he could reuse it, to convincing herself that it was fine that he’d cheated on her.

Hauser writes: “I hated that I needed more than this from him. There is nothing more humiliating to me than my own desires,” and I can relate. In the past, I have definitely squashed my own needs and I think deep down I fear doing that again.

Hauser cleverly weaves the story of the breakup into a tale of going on a science trip to study whooping cranes. The Crane Wife itself is a Japanese story about a crane that plucks out all her feathers to avoid being seen as she really is by a man - you can see the analogy.

Do you really know yourself?

A friend just leant me a series of essays by the psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz who details sessions with his clients. Grosz tells their stories and at the same time helps readers to understand themselves better in The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves.

One concept he writes about is known as splitting, where someone puts on a front to hide what’s really going on. He tells the story of a Jewish woman whose father refuses to go to her wedding because she marries someone Catholic. Years later, her parents split up - because her father has been having an affair with - you guessed it - a Catholic woman. Splitting is an “unconscious strategy that aims to keep us ignorant of feelings in ourselves that we’re unable to tolerate,” Grosz explains. “Typically, we want to see ourselves as good, and put those aspects of ourselves that we find shameful into another person or group.” Enlightening stuff.

Thank you to Markus Winkler and Unsplash for the image that goes with this post when viewed on the homepage.