Faking it

Rachel wrote an interesting post in her blog Everything I need to know I learned in Kindergarten.... She probably picked up some of those feelings from me, I feel the same way at times. I often have the feeling that I missed an important day in first grade where everyone learned some basic key to understanding life that was so obvious that no one ever brings it up. I had hoped that my kids would come home from school and let me in on the secret.

Rachel is one of the smartest and most capable people I know. I know my telling her that is not going to change the way she sees herself anymore than when I hear someone say the same of me. I had a roommate in college who told me that I all but called someone a liar when they paid me a compliment so I have learned to be a lot more gracious when someone says something nice about me. And I will say that now I do let some of it sink in. As they say "Progress, not perfection."

I wrote the following comments on Rachel's post:

It is interesting that most people see us differently than we see ourselves. One of the things that I have learned as I get older (or is that wiser?) is that most people feel like they are faking it to some degree or other. In my world of computer programming there are things that I barely understand, somethings I can bluff my way through, and then there are the things that I know so well that I am an absolute expert (no one knows as much as I do about it).

When I was a young adult I was surprised to hear my father-in-law (a plastic surgeon) tell one of his children that they needed to take on of the grandkids to a pediatrician pronto. I figured since my father-in-law was an M.D. he would know everything there was to know about medicine when of course there is too much for any one person to know.

Live and learn.