When I’m drawing I feel a little closer to the way birds navigate when flying, or to hares finding shelter when pursued, or to fish knowing where to spawn, or trees finding a way to light, or bees constructing their cells.*
John Berger

And I feel like an imposter often. That’s because my best work involves doing things I’ve never done before.**
Seth Godin

In my university work, I meet many people who feel themselves to be imposters.

I am one of them.

Anne Lamott helpful confesses:

Almost everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, scared, and yet designed for joy.^

Which end of the sentence struck you most powerfully?

For me, it’s the joy end, the flip-side of imposterism.

I can focus on not being like everyone around me, or explore how the very point is not to be like everyone else, and to bring my best self into a new situation.

This is the purpose of our story:

Mythology opens the world so that it becomes transparent to something that is beyond speech, beyond words – in short, what we call transcendence.^^

One more thought: on one occasion, Jesus’ disciples asked him who was the greatest:

He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.*^

At first it looked like the child was the imposter, but it turned out to be the other way around: the imposter shows the way.

What’s you’re equivalent of John Berger’s drawing experience?

Do it.

*From John Berger’s Bento’s Sketchbook;
**From Seth Godin’s The Practice;
^Anne Lamott, quoted in Maria Popova’s The Marginalian: Anne Lamott on Forgiveness, Self-Forgiveness, and the Relationship Between Brokenness and Joy;
^^From Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey;
*^Matthew 18:1-5.