The Ring of Confidence

Confidence is a strange companion. With it, we can conquer the world yet, without it, the world conquers us. Take a tennis player for example: 2 sets up and cruising and then a silly mistake or a great shot from your opponent causes that little confidence worm to start burrowing into your skull and the thoughts change from I can't possible lose this to What if ......? Next thing you know, you're no longer fighting your opponent but battling with your own mind.

People often laugh when I admit to an excruciating lack of confidence in my own abilities. Good old Graham, always playing the fool and putting on this bumbling idiot act ....... erm, no, that is me.Yes, I'm extremely good at hiding it sometimes (which is a problem in itself) but I confess, confidence and myself are strange bedfellows who will sometimes engage in a joyous coupling but predominantly sleep back to back. I've really got no reason to be like it apart from Nature and nurture (mostly nurture!) and am fortunate to have had more than my fair share of success in my lifetime but it's not something I've ever accepted or been happy with and I've always needed to drive myself further. The irony of continuously striving for better is that I know I can never reach a point where I am happy with what I have achieved and therefore this undermines the confidence which has started to be built by those successes.

The reason I started thinking about all this was my photography. For a long time, I found it very hard to accept the plaudits of my friends and photographic peers but then one day, for reasons unknown, I experienced a true Road to Damascus moment. I was thinking about my Camera Club and the things I wanted to achieve there and realised that I had basically done them all in the 3 years I've been going i.e. move from Beginners to Advanced league, win an individual competition and receive a wider recognition of my skills. It was at that point that I suddenly knew that none of this really mattered. What DID matter was an acceptance in oneself of being where one wanted to be. I didn't care that I would never be the best, judgement by others meant nothing. All I knew that, possibly for the first time in my life, I was actually content with what I was doing and the standard I was at. It was an incredibly liberating feeling. I was doing something my way and I no longer had to judge myself nor worry about being judged.

It lasted about 3 weeks.

Confidence is about self-fulfilling prophecy and that can go two ways. For me, I've been looking at some beautiful photos taken by fellow photographers here in Eastbourne as well as photographer friends around the world and, like dirty bath water, that contentment I had slowly drained away. This was the tennis player's game-changing moment as I looked at my photos and irrevocably saw them turning from satisfying extensions of me and my way of interpreting Life to very ordinary snaps, devoid of feeling and clarity.

Oh, I know that this is a passing phase and to a degree, part of my own condition but, just for a short period of time, I felt contentment. I only hope that somehow I can recover it. There's a Chinese saying that goes something like It is better not to eat of the greatest dish at all than to eat it once and never again. To know the reality of contentment for a while and have it snatched away rather than merely dream of what it may be like is not something I relish.

Finally, why am I writing this and laying myself open?

“To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength.” - Criss Jami

Alternatively, of course, I might just be being self-indulgent .......... or self-pitying ............ or just plain weird.