I’ve been this week in Los Angeles. Riding bikes with friends in Newport, we stopped for fish tacos at Bear Flag. We saw a guy on a moped with a dog in a crate on the back. My friend Pete remarked, “That lifestyle is completely foreign to me: he rides around with a dog on his motorbike, he’s not at work on a weekday, he looks good with his shirt off.”
Kid is a friggin’ bad-ass! For all of his self-deprecation (he’s the first to let you know when he’s got “a monster Z” on his back) he’s got to be one of the most confident people I know. It’s really inspiring.
I think I sometimes confuse confidence with self-praise. “If I tell myself good things about myself, then I must be demonstrating confidence.” But that’s totally off-base. Confidence is unshakable comfort in your own skin. Both ‘the good’ and ‘the bad.’ (‘Confidence’ and ‘comfortable’ share the same root, ‘con,’ from the latin ‘equivalent to.’)
It’s a way of seeing yourself. It’s a way of experiencing yourself. It’s a way to breath unconsciously, seeing yourself naked, a bit scrawny, and perfect too.
