Expert

One of the ways my addiction has manifested is in extreme overconfidence. I've probably already written about this, but I'm working through the 12 steps with a men's group and some recent questions from the book brought this up again. I'm still not sure where it started, but I hated to be corrected or told anything. I'm pretty sure it started as a defense mechanism but grew into a complete obsession with presenting myself as knowing everything about everything. Here's a story...

In seventh grade I was on the basketball team. Not that I enjoyed basketball or was any good at it. I think I participated in sports mostly to impress my stepfather who couldn't have cared less anyway. But, I digress. You're not expected to be a pro ballplayer at age 12 and I wasn't anywhere close. I made some sort of mistake in practice one day and Coach Schwanke came over to correct my bad form. Before he could even get anything out of his mouth I said, "I know." To this he replied, "what do you know?" Since I didn't really know anything, I proceeded to make stuff up hoping to sound like I knew and avoid the embarrassment of not knowing everything. The coach called me on it and, to add insult to injury, made me dribble the ball 'round and 'round the court for all the remaining practice time.

It would have been good to pay attention to that lesson. No one knows everything and it's okay to accept the coaching and help of someone who can help me. Had that been learned in seventh grade I might have avoided some of the pain I've experienced in life. There would, of course, have been different pain. It's an unrealistic expectation that life will be pain, mistake and struggle free.

In the movie "Being There", a 1979 tour de force for Peter Sellers, Chance the Gardener is hailed as a genius. People make all sorts of claims about his abilities. At the end of the movie a group of powerful men are planning to make him the next President of the United States. The problem is, Chance is an imbecile who spent his entire life inside a wealthy man's house in Washington, D.C. All he knows is how to manage a garden because that's all he ever did. People see him as an expert on everything when, in reality, he's an expert in just one thing. The charming thing about Chance is that he doesn't buy the hype...he isn't even aware of the hype because he's such a simpleton. The lesson for me is that, people can say whatever they want about me, but it's dangerous when I start to believe the press releases. Worse is when I'm the one publishing the press releases. I'm no expert, I'm just a guy working one day at a time recovering life.