You don't trash a person on the basis of a couple of weaknesses or inabilities

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Website owner:  James Miller

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You don’t trash a person on the basis of a couple of weaknesses or inabilities

If I wished to be negative about myself, critical of myself, hard on myself with regard to mental weaknesses and inabilities, I could certainly do it. I never do but all of the evidence is there and if I wanted to focus on it, I certainly could. I still can’t think well on my feet, get flustered easily, tend to panic under pressure, lack presence of mind under pressure, and get confused and mixed up trying to do arithmetic in my head (especially when under pressure). I have all kinds of reasons to believe that my memory (for at least some things) is very poor compared to that of most people. And I am slow. These are problems I had in my youth and nothing has changed.

An incident happened yesterday. I was kayaking down a river, saw a couple on the bank fishing, and asked if they had caught any fish. They answered, “One, a bass.” The lady then asked me what my name was. I thought it odd that someone would ask me my name on so little exchange of words. I said, “Jim”. The lady said, “Jim Miller?” I said, “Yes!” She then told me who she was. It was someone I had known 40 years ago when she was a teenager. I asked her how she recognized me. She said, “Your voice. I recognized your voice.” I was dumbfounded, completely amazed, that someone could recognize me by my voice after 40 years had passed. I could certainly never do that. The lady asked me how old I was when she knew me. The computation is very simple, trivial if you are thinking right, and yet I panicked, hesitated, spent a bit of time trying to figure it out, and ended telling her 50 when the correct answer was 40. The age of 50 didn’t seem right when I said it — I thought I was more like 40. I was 10 years off on a very trivial computation. I guess I panic at just the idea of doing arithmetic in my head and that is part of the problem. I would say I have, and have always had, a concentration problem. I easily become distracted, am distracted by noise, have always needed special conditions in order to concentrate well. (Like quiet and solitude.) For years I had a complex about my inabilities, my mental weaknesses, and became hung up on them, obsessed with them. Now I never give any thought to them. Why the difference? Well, I now realize that there are a huge number of abilities and attributes involved in trying to define a person. Consider all of the different personality traits that go to describe a person. (See a list in Personality traits.) Trying to set a measure on a person on the basis of only one or two abilities is like evaluating a house only on the basis of the amount of closet space it has. There are a great many things you consider when buying a house, not just the amount of closet space it has. I realize now that I have a great many strengths. I don’t just trash myself because I have some weaknesses.

There is another reason why I now don’t worry about my weaknesses as I once did. I am now retired and in a financially secure position. I don’t need to feel insecure or to worry about losing a job and getting caught out in the cold or surviving in a competitive world.

7 June 2021