Many (many) years ago, I was on a treadmill in a Park Slope gym. A nature documentary was playing on the overhead TV, and as I pounded along, I learned about Fabien Cousteau. This is how I remember it: Fabien longed to create a real-life version of the one-man shark submarine Tin Tin navigated in the comics he read as a kid. He sunk time, treasure, and reputation into the endeavor, a silly pursuit to many around him, considering he was the grandson of famed oceanographer and explorer, Jacques Cousteau — until, that is, the success of his effort proved it was not, in fact, silly.
Details aside, the lesson I took was this: people can make the life they want. The “rules” are sometimes as easy to discard as they are to follow. Crucial insight at this exact moment because I was in a marriage of my own making that I no longer wished to be in. This random documentary of no particular import gave me permission to change course.
Years later, I stumbled across a TED-like talk about our collective obsession with Messianic moments: we expect that someone will tap us on the shoulder and invite us to achieve our potential. Morpheus with the red pill. Peter Parker’s encounter with a spider. Cinderella and her fairy godmother. We hope for some anointed body to peer into our souls, recognize our heretofore overlooked greatness, and invite us to the illuminated table where we become our best selves. An external something or other to give us permission.
Is this why we’re all so anxious? Because we all know that these mythical moments rarely, if ever, come. There is no red pill. Instead, we feel our potential languish and are frustrated by what we’re not — but should be? — doing/achieving. The LinkedIn Doom Scroll is real, folks.
The speaker (whose name I sadly cannot recover from memory or Google) invited us instead to be “uninvited” — to show up, make our interest and effort known, after which we are more likely to be invited. But this still doesn’t account for that fact that even when we ARE brought into the fold, we are filled with dread that we’ll be found out and humiliated beyond repair. The invitation was sent in error!
Maybe what we want, really, is permission to be imperfect. To flounder along until we are the best we can be. (Our very own training montage that maybe ends with us being good enough but not legendary?)
Maybe we overlook that our heroes, even endowed with literal superpowers, are not working totally alone. They have mentors, sidekicks, patrons, butlers, and unseen voices of wisdom.
Maybe we expect to arrive to some static place of achievement where we’re proven to be valuable, immutable persons for now and ever. (Also not true, according to scions of industry).
Perhaps Imposter Syndrome flows from our unrealistic perception of others and unfair demands of ourselves. Really, what we need is to grant ourselves permission to be uninvited, imperfect, and even abject failures so that we feel worthy enough to try. Or as Reshma Saujani instructs, we should focus more on being brave and less on being perfect.