photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash
Before we built the primitive cottage we lived in for 14 years, we rented a place that had one room with a wood stove and no plumbing. Living primitively is not for weenies, especially when something goes wrong. It takes grit and self-confidence. Here’s an example:
One afternoon I went out to gather a load of wood to stoke the stove. I tossed the wood down into the wood box and felt a sudden sting in my left eye. It felt weird. I looked in the mirror and there was a 2 inch splinter sticking out of my eye! Oh shit. I called my neighbor Mike and had this southern Indiana type conversation.
- Me: Hey Mike, are you busy?
- Mike: I just opened a beer and I’m getting something to eat
- Me: Can you give me a ride to the clinic?
- Mike: Yeah, how about in an hour?
- Me: Nah, I think I need to go now. I have a splinter in my eye
- Mike: Okay, let me take a few bites and I’ll be down to pick you up
- Me: I’ll buy you dinner if we can go now
I tried not to blink. I was calm. I wasn’t about to pull out that splinter myself. It didn’t hurt a lot and I was wary about doing something stupid and losing my vision. When Mike drove up he was pretty freaked out to see my injury.
- Mike: Jesus Zain, why didn’t you tell me there was a stick poking out of your eye?
- Me: Well, I told you it was a splinter
- Mike: This is more than a splinter! Geez, get in the truck and let’s go.
A half hour truck ride later, the clinic took one look at me and put me in a room before all the people in the waiting room fainted or threw up. The nurse and doctor came in right away and stood in front of me shaking their heads.
- Doctor: I’m going to numb your eye and get that out of there.
- Me: Great.
- Doctor: Then we’ll give you some antibiotic cream to put in your eye. Rest your eye. It might bleed and it might hurt. And you’ll need to follow up with an ophthalmologist to make sure there’s no damage.
- Me: Great.
He numbed my eye and the nurse held my eyelids back while he sloooowly pulled out the splinter. They washed out the eye and filled it with antibiotic cream, wrote me a prescription for more cream and some pain killers. Then they threw an eye patch on me and sent me home. No permanent harm was done and I totally recovered.
Why on earth am I telling you this gory story? It’s a lesson in self-confidence and self-worth. Self-confidence means knowing when to be tough and when to ask for help. It means knowing you’re making the best decisions you can with the information you have at the time. It means knowing you’ll always be okay deep inside. That’s the self-worth and self-confidence we need to cultivate. It’s when we become our own unexpected hero.
You are worthy. Go be you.
Do you have a story about being in a situation that required you to show up and be the best you you could? Where you had to be confident, even if you were scared, lost or unprepared for the challenge? Drop me a line and let me know.
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