I want to share this because based on feedback, I think a lot of people think I am something that I am not actually. Often, because of how I present online, and in public dialogue and discourse, people believe I am more confident than I really am. The secret is that this is not at all the case.
Occasionally, I am on the receiving end of meaningful feedback, especially when someone will say something like, “You said this thing I’ve been meaning to say, or feeling, but never knew how to say.” That always means a great deal. And there are people in this community who I look up to for doing exactly the same for me. Shay Stewart-Bouley, aka Black Girl in Maine, is always that person. Sam James of The Bollard is another.
But also people will come to me and remark on my confidence of perspective and voice, which is — if I am being absolutely honest and transparent — largely part of a performance. The performance is part of a voice I have established as part of maintaining and building a public voice. And as we all know, when you say something publicly, or use your platform for someone else who is trying to say something, you are being vulnerable and being vulnerable is a gamble. Some people live to eat you alive for being vulnerable or taking a risk or being wrong, and so sometimes we posture in both how we present and engage about our ideas, feelings, values and convictions.
My impulses and my brain/heart often send me two different messages. I become more confident about stances and positions when I let my impulses do their thing. I keep my mouth shut while they exorcise their demons, and then I engage where I really stand. And often my initial feelings are wrong. Often, my initial feelings are saying some variant of, “I’ve spent a lot of my life going unchallenged in this way. Frig you for challenging me.” Or they are saying, “but I love this person/place/thing and so what you are saying about this person/place/thing can’t be true.”
I need to check myself when my impulses, not my brain/heart, dictate my response or action. I think a lot of us get frustrated because we allow ourselves to believe the thing we get worked up about is something we’ve considered in our brains/hearts, but it is really still tangled up with our impulses. Ask anyone I work with or anyone who knows me offline: I’m often apologizing for letting my impulse do the work before I sort it through with my brain/heart. My fight or flight mode is a monster.
I find confidence when I know my impulses have gotten the crazy out of their system and then I can pass a concept, idea, feeling, whatever through higher, more deliberate consideration. And sometimes what will happen is I’ll want to side with my impulses because that position makes me more comfortable. Sometimes, when my brain/heart takes a stab at something, I don’t like the conclusion they come to because it lands me on the side of an unpopular opinion. That’s where the posturing comes in because often I pretend that I’m not concerned with making people upset or angry by saying an unpopular thing when in reality the scared little boy who just wants everyone to be happy and to be friends still very much lives inside of me. I have my convictions, of course, but I don’t want people to be upset with me because — you know — baggage.
But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that there have been literally thousands of times when I said something, posted something, submitted a piece, or whatever where that boy inside of me was sad about having to sit in the hole my brain and heart had dug for me.
And what a place of extraordinary privilege I am coming from to only sit in that uncomfortable place on the occasion, and to not forever sit there because the collective systems around us benefit by an undervaluing of my sex, orientation, identity, skin-color, place of origin, and so-on.
I am forever moderating the battle between my brain/heart and my impulses, and I am trying to rig that battle in favor of higher ground. I still mess up all the time. I still come to dumb conclusions, and I still occasionally err on the side of taking the wrong course of action. And I try to right these wrongs by being honest with my assessments of who I am and what I am doing, who I am serving and who I have wronged, inadvertently or otherwise, and by constantly striving to quiet the pieces of me that remain resistant to testing the waters outside of my comfort zone.
Alex Steed has written about and engaged in politics since he was a teenager. He’s an owner-partner of a Portland-based content production company and lives with his family, dogs and garden in Westbrook.