Two Sides of the Same Coin

July 30^th, 2020

11:21 A.M. Montevideo, Uruguay

Yesterday I received the biggest compliment I’ve ever gotten in Uruguay. 

“You’re a loud person.” (Said in Spanish, of course.)

Now usually, one might take this as a slight, but I was thrilled. 

Partly because I knew this person meant it in a good way, but also because it resonated with how I see myself. I felt like myself again. I’ve always been the loud one, with way too many opinions to share, and with a dark joke that only half of the people around me will laugh at while the others do the whole, “Hahaha…. yeah” and desperately try to change the subject. And I’m okay with that. But it’s not really who I’ve been these last 11 months.

Living abroad requires a lot of reflection, about both your experience and your identity. When you’re not surrounded by your culture anymore, and in my case, the language as well, you have a lot of moments where you second guess yourself. Lots of completely genuine moments where I think,

 “Wait, do we do this in the United States? A year ago I would have said yes, but maybe not. Is this person with whom I’m speaking right? Do they know more about my own country than I do?” 

I think part of this is because herd mentality is completely erased. You really have to be secure in who you are. You become faced with the reality that the reasons for acting a certain way or having a certain habit are mostly because you’ve always been surrounded by people who do the exact same thing and you’re not as unique as you would like to have originally thought.

I’ve been doing a lot of reflection lately. You see, I’ve realized that I have a huge ego. Like really, really big. But I also have a lot of insecurities. One of the major ones being that I fear people will see me as stupid and incompetent. And what I originally thought were two different parts of my life, I think now might be two sides of the same coin. Let me explain.

My ego is large, and it makes me wary about taking advice or even just trusting other people. Now, not all of this is bad. (In fact, I think you have to have some sort of an inflated ego in order to be independent, but that’s a topic for another day.) The way I feed my ego is by my eloquence, the jokes I make, the laughter I receive, etc. But I never thought about what would happen when I struggle to make those jokes because I have to do it in another language. Don’t get me wrong. I love learning Spanish, but at times it definitely feels like my superpower has been taken away from me. And when nothing is feeding that ego, all that is left is insecurity. And as it is with learning a new language, my worst nightmare has arrived: I’m seen as incompetent. 

Okay, maybe not incompetent. But I feel like Superman and all of a sudden I’ve got kryptonite chained to my ankle. (Yes, I just compared myself to Superman…thank you, ego!) Superman knows he’s got powers within him; he has the ability to do so many incredible things, but this thing prevents him from doing all of that. And my kryptonite is my insecurity, the other side of the coin. My ego isn’t being fed, the coin is facing the other way, and all I can see are my fears.

I plainly see it interfering with my daily life, yet it’s a difficult thing to change. And I want to address that. I think a lot of us don’t have any issues pointing out the things that hold us back, but I think we have a tough time acknowledging that it’s hard to change those things, or at least that we are trying to change them but keep failing repeatedly, especially when those things are within us.

It’s me. No one else is telling me I’m incompetent. It’s me. It’s my brain. 

The interesting part is that usually most of us have moments where we can flip our coin back and forth, so we don’t see how much those insecurities are impacting our lives. However, I’m in the unique situation where I rarely get to see the helpful side of my ego, simply because I rarely get the opportunity to speak in English. 

I don’t really know if there’s a message I’m trying to send out to you all, but if there were, I would say to pay attention. When your insecurities show up, ask yourself why. How do you compensate for that? Because now I’m being faced with what I’m realizing is many years of putting a band-aid over a bullet hole. I don’t really have an answer, just more of a, “Here’s what I’ve been pondering, now go and do what you will with it.” So here’s the question:

What side of the coin are you going to show to the world today?

(Photos below are obviously very professional images of me fighting between both sides of myself while attempting to take a nice picture by the ocean.)