Jenny Bathurst: "hosting a dinner party would send me into meltdown"
"They say that from insecurity comes a façade of arrogance, and from a façade of arrogance comes the need for competition. I imagine that all of us are guilty of creating unnecessary competition in some situations in our lives, and I admit that I am exactly the same. However, that competition isn’t always in an attempt to put ourselves on a pedestal: quite the opposite. For some unknown reason we like to convince our friends and family that we’re doing a worse job at life than others entirely through our own fault, and if you’re not sure what I’m talking about then let me give you an example. One area I seem to gravitate to is cooking. “Oh I’m sure you’re a much better cook than I am, I’m terrible, I can barely microwave a ready meal”, I say, retorting that the person I am speaking with is surely much more capable than I am in the kitchen. The truth is that yes, the idea of hosting a dinner party would send me into meltdown but I can cook up a meal for myself most nights without causing (too much) food poisoning.
"The same goes for studying. I bring it upon myself to insist that I haven’t done nearly enough to pass an exam as others and that I am probably deserving of being kicked off the course altogether, when in reality I have pushed myself quite hard to try and achieve what I want to. I suppose that any right-thinking individual would look at this and call it simple modesty and that the reason we fight to make others seem more clever or capable than ourselves is to boost their confidence, however I can’t agree that this is always the case.
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Hide Ad"To look at anyone else through the lens of social media or even just to meet someone who isn’t in your close social circle, you can quite easily convince yourself that they are doing a much better job of everything than you are. It always just happens to be the day that you have decided to have a big cry and watch the re-runs of Come Dine With Me on a channel you didn’t even know existed that your friend you haven’t seen in years has just popped to Hawaii for a long weekend and is currently relaxing to the sounds of the hyperactive holiday reps and tourist scams. But it’s still not fair because ‘how-could-I-end-up-like-this-it-must-be-because-I’m-lazy-and-if-only-I-did-more-of-this-and-less-of-this’ and then it’s the ad break so you flick to the shopping channel and no longer are you reflecting on your life but on how a brooch with a frog on it could cost that much money.
"I get stuck in these cycles constantly, persuading myself again and again that it’s my fault and that if only I worked harder or could excel more at a certain skill then I would be on the same level as everyone else. I believe that we all have a purpose to life and that we’re not just organisms floating through a galaxy, but for this to be true we can’t all have the same purpose and the same skillset. Not everyone can be as good at microwaving meals than I am, it takes years of perfecting. I don’t think there’s any need to compare what I can or can’t do with others, it gets us nowhere, but what I will try to do is to take what I can do one step at a time. I hope to be on this earth for a while, and even if I’m ‘not doing enough’ I’ve got plenty of time to take it slowly and reach where I want to be, not measuring my standards by anyone else’s."
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