"Be confident"

"Being confident", the age old mantra. Stand up straight, look people in the eyes, never stutter, and never look back. Thanks for the advice, really. I really do get the parts that make up confidence. But, why exactly am I supposed to exude this arbitrary attribute? Well, let's see, it is the key that's supposed to get me anywhere in life, right? Great. Well, I guess it makes sense to put on that facade and "be confident" whenever it serves my purposes, you know, so I can convince them that I am in fact a very well-adjusted individual.

I hear "be confident" thrown around a lot (not necessarily at me, I'm not that beta). Ok, don't get me wrong, it makes total sense as a means. But, somehow, I find that advice a bit hollow. It makes the notion of "being confident" seem like such an active process. Shouldn't we reach a state where we are confident as a natural extension of ourselves? Wouldn't it, then, be much better advice to start advocating for people to "feel confident"?

But, aye, there's the rub, isn't it? Now this advice requires us to deal with all those issues floating in our thoughts that weigh us down. So, then, why exactly should I feel confident? Am I not just some mite attached onto a chunk of rock, hurling at breakneck speeds through the vast emptiness that is the universe? Are we not just a set of biological processes, processes that each and every single one of us mites clings onto dearly and tries, almost desperately, to prolong for as long as possible.

Given all this, why should I feel any ounce of confidence? All those actions that I perform day after day, after day after day, are just not very significant anymore. The aggregate form that I have developed into today really isn't much of anything. And, all those little things I worry about, sometimes profusely so, really mean nothing when my eyes adopt an upward gaze.

But, at the same time, this harrowing condemnation seems also to be an avenue of salvation. If those things that are supposed to build me up become trivial once taken into perspective, then so must those things that weigh me down. And, those things that weigh me down are, definitely, legion. But with that meaning less, maybe, just maybe, I can actually walk through these crowded city streets unabated by those pestilent thoughts. Maybe it's ok that I don't have all my ducks in a row or that I'm still rife with rough edges. Because, really, are we not just mites, each and every one of us, firmly grounded on this chunk of rock, which itself is tethered to our giant fireball, flying through the great superunknown?