impostor syndrome

 anything less than whole?

as a wonderful old song lamented:
how can anyone ever tell himself, tell herself,
that at the heart we’re anything less than beautiful?

what we should not allow is to be dumbed-down,
to let the trickster within switch the cups around
and convince us the best of who we are is as nothing
and that the least of us is the part we should choose to be,

maybe we need to feel we’re faking it
so that hubris doesn’t blind us, or those around us,
but I worry when I watch a student, a colleague, myself,
pull back from a risk, from an effort,
when we feel as the impostor,

it takes work to build,
to essay forth out of love,
out of gritty determination,
to put together what we know can be put together,
that’s when we can connect the glory within us
to the glory within another,

when we lack the belief in self to feel good enough
about ourselves to do the work,
we lose a bit of who we can be,

while each of us still may stumble,
and we still will doubt,
we can learn to believe in ourselves, to trust ourselves enough,
so that we can, and will, move forward,

and the world is a better place
because of that movement toward wholeness,
each day is a time to believe, and to do.

by Henry H. Walker
September 25, ’12