DAY 173- TO BE OR NOT TO BE AN IMPOSTOR ... THAT IS THE QUESTION

Day 173

Have you ever been in a conversation where people are talking about something that you don’t know anything about?  Two reactions are possible in this type of situation, you can either decide to be honest and ask details in order to understand and learn, or you could pretend you know what people are talking about and wallow in your ignorance.

Obviously, put that way, the first solution certainly sounds better.  Why would someone purposely choose ignorance?  The reason why we sometimes choose to pretend we know, even when we don’t, is  fear of judgement. Many of us fear of giving an image of being unintelligent.

Judgement is inevitable.  We judge and we are judged all the time.  In the end, we need to look at it from a personal perspective.  To grow, to learn and to evolve, we need to be humble enough to accept that knowledge is a never-ending work in progress.

As a teacher, I’m often confronted with questions.  I don’t always know the answer, but I often feel like I should.  How could I be teaching and not know everything about my subject matter?  It took me time to accept it, but I’m slowly learning that admitting my ignorance doesn't take away the knowledge I do have.  In class now, when my students ask me something I don't know, I simply say: "Honestly, I don't know, I'll look it up and get back to you."  

When, in the past, in a class context, but also in a social context, I’ve pretended to know, it never made me feel very good.  I would get anxious and start sweating.  I would be thinking: What if someone finds out I'm pretending?  What if I get caught?  In those situations, I would often feel like an impostor.  I would  try not to get noticed or simply suddenly have an urge to go to the bathroom so that I wouldn’t be put on the spot and be forced to reveal my fraud. 

I have already written a post about the fact that we all lie and that lying could sometimes be beneficial to us.  However, in the context of pretending you know something you don't, I believe it is always better to be truthful.  It takes courage, but every time I’m confronted with that type of situation and I confess my lack of knowledge, I come out of the conversation not only feeling happy that I have learned something knew, but also that I was able to stand by and be proud of who I really am.




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