Here’s the thing: I, like so many geeklings, have self-esteem issues. This hardly makes me unique. In fact, part of my problem in that arena is my lack of uniqueness. I’ve written whined about this before, of course, but it bears mentioning here because coming to grips with the fact that I’m not demonstrably, markedly better than everyone else in some fashion is one of the keys to accepting who I am. (And dammit, it’s tough. I want to be exceptional in some useful fashion. I want not just to be good at something, but damned good. I’m not, unfortunately.)

The technique I most often use to deal with my feelings of inadequacy is humor, mostly in the form of pointed barbs at my own expense. I’m quite good at it. In fact, I’m so good that I sometimes find myself in the strange position of being angry at myself so I make a joke at my own expense that’s so funny it makes everyone around me laugh, then everyone cringes apologetically because they realize they’re laughing at my pain, and so I have to absolve them of their guilt. After all, I did say something funny, so it’s natural for them to laugh! (An odd side-effect of this experience is that it takes me “out of myself” in the process, so I’m then less angry at myself. Weird, huh?)

I may not be in the “stand up comedian” class of funny guys, but I’m not a complete slouch, either. This actually presents me with a challenge when it comes to handling my foibles and failings. My knee-jerk reaction is to joke about it, but that’s not helping anything. Is it? Okay, maybe the ability to laugh about it can help, but not the way I normally go about it. A challenge for me, then, is to find ways to express my frustration through the humor I’m so attuned to without turning it into a jab at myself. It’s a neat trick if I can pull it off, eh?

Not to say that if I stop making jokes at my own expense I’ll stop facing so many bouts of depression, but every little bit helps.

There’s another side to this that crossed my mind yesterday. I exchanged a few emails with someone, and in the course of discussion she wrote something that one or another of us in our particular circle often expresses: “I’m an idiot.” I replied that I think we should collectively call a moratorium on calling ourselves rude names just because we make a mistake. I’m one of the worst for doing that, but I’m certainly not the only one who’s made it a bad habit. I know for a fact that my immediate circle of friends and loved ones consists of rather intelligent people, and I’m not all that stupid either. So what gives?

It’s not that any of us have consistently low self-esteem; I’d say that we instead have a tenuous grasp on our value as individuals. What’s sad is that we so easily give in to the temptation to beat ourselves up over simple, honest mistakes. None of us is perfect. One could also argue that life’s been rough lately, but when has life not been rough? Even with the crises going on currently, for most of us things are less stressful now than in years past. I’m not sure if we’re all simply worn down, or have allowed ourselves to believe we’re worn down. Somewhere along the way we lost the ability to just laugh and shrug certain kinds of things off. Either way, I’ve come to believe that the only solution for it is simply to stop allowing circumstances to serve as an excuse for beating ourselves up (or being lazy, or what-have-you).

Easier said than done, you say? Probably. Then again, most of this has to do with what we say rather than do, so maybe that’s not the overwhelming downside it might at first seem. To take Bill Cosby wildly out of context, “First you say it, then you do it!” When we give ourselves permission to be imperfect, to make mistakes, to be human like everybody else, and stop using our mistakes as excuses to take whacks at our self-esteem… maybe we can achieve something resembling actual happiness.

It’s a radical concept, isn’t it?