The Occasional Virtue

I read a newspaper article entitled “Study: College Kids More Cocky.”  The woman with the credentials to be quoted in such an article is Jean Twenge, author of the book Generation Me and a psychologist at San Diego State University.  She has published a new study concluding that college students “feel far more superior than their elders” – at least 60 percent of incoming freshman rate themselves as above average in all areas, compared to about 39 percent in 1966.  “It’s not just confidence. It’s over confidence – narcissism even,” she says.

“There are some advantages and some disadvantages to self esteem, so having some degree of confidence is often a good thing,” she begins.  But, as she sees it, too much self esteem can cause ‘a disconnect’ between self-perception and reality.  The Greeks called it hubris, as I recall from my own college days – and it was the downfall of almost every tragic hero (and more than a few modern day politicians, I might add).

I could have composed such an article myself last week, if someone had been with me to write it down while I was driving – when a very young teenage blonde, way too sexy for her age, made a stupid move in her BMW car while chattering wildly and laughing enthusiastically on her cell phone.  The stupid move put her ahead of me with no apologies or acknowledgment of the life or mishap I had just saved her by not asserting myself and rather deferring to her blind stupidity.  She will never know she was wrong – she will never know what she could have lost or what might have happened.  And so, I felt for just that time like a silent guardian angel who had watched out for her life (and mine) while she plodded along in the insular world of her own self importance – unconscious of me, of others, of danger, of wrong, of cost, of invisible forces to which one ought to be grateful . . .

I possibly saved her life, mine too, and certainly much inconvenience at the least.  Two cars did not collide that day because one of us deferred to the other who was in the wrong. Farther up the road, we two strangers sat side by side in parallel lanes at a stop light, and I looked over to see if the young driver might at least acknowledge the guardian angel who saved her – but she was still swaddled in the bubble wrap of her own private cell phone conversation and the climate control of her car and the slightly tinted glass and probably the stereophonic sound too – protected from intruders like me, immersed, disconnected from reality – just as the author had explained. “A disconnect between self-perception and reality.”

She did not look at me from her controlled environment.  And if she had, she might have been offended by the middle aged intruder trying to make eye contact through her tinted glass. She might have called her mother to report me.  She might have made some awful sign or mean look at me.

I don’t generally speak on cell phones when I’m driving because I’m not confident of my ability to do both without mishap – but I will never shy away from talking aloud to myself.  In those ensuing moments I recounted the young driver I once had been – always two hands grasped firmly on the wheel at 10 and 2 as I’d been taught, my neck and back muscles tense with the knowledge I could die while doing this, a foot and mind always poised to break on a dime if necessary.  I was not confident as a young person – in driving or in any other aspect of life.  The driving analogy might transfer to everything I did as a youth – sure of danger, only myself to blame, poised for sudden stops, and aware that others were probably right and I was probably wrong – always.

There’s a lot to be said for a lack of confidence at times.  I said this aloud to myself as the young blonde driver accelerated to the green light and sped beyond me into the sunset.

My own children were young and growing in self esteem in the late 80’s when Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers told them daily how special and wonderful they were.  I used to think, passing from room to room with a load of laundry or a wet mop or fresh baked snacks from the oven, I used to think, “Wow, no one ever told me that when I was young . . . how nice.” But then in later years I began to notice – and I’m not talking about my own children or their friends because I think that a moderate dose of confidence is a necessary thing and I wish I’d had it, and all that – however, I began to notice an over confidence and false importance and entitlement in some members of their generation.  I could see it regularly in the malls or neighborhood setting or my children’s schools.  They deferred to no one; their kind of confidence seemed to outshine my hard earned variety in every instance – and I began to think that the self esteem inducers had somehow over shot their mark. They had aimed the arrow at healthy self esteem, which needed to be done, but they had somehow landed it in the insular world of narcissism and self importance.

I never talked about it back then because I was afraid I was wrong or just getting old – but after reading this article and seeing the data that confirms my hunch, I’ll say what I’ve been thinking for many years – that Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers might have done well to add this caveat to their daily message:  “. . . and not only are you special and wonderful, but so is everyone else – and don’t forget it!  That’s the part they left out.