Adam Blatner

One nice thing about thinking about life in terms of the roles we play—i.e., “role dynamics”— is that it takes the pressure off of having to “be” wonderful. I am not sure, but suspect that many young people still are caught up in the semantic jungle of labels. How can I be okay when I know I’m so terrible or wretched or mediocre? Answer: We play many roles, hundreds of roles, and many of those have many role components. It’s okay to be good at some things, bad at some things, and in the middle in most things. That’s how it is for everyone.

Some folks are known as great because they do some things quite well and don’t make much trouble with the things they don’t do well. They delegate, get someone else to do it, ask for help, play it down, don’t make a fuss about it. This is the truth for almost everyone! The greatest people—the ones you tend to admire or envy—have many faults, foibles, weaknesses, roles where they have no talent, etc.—but they don’t go out of their way to present these roles to the general public.

People who are perceived more as “losers” manage to present to the world their less skilled roles. In that case, they give the impression of their less-than-adequate status.  Or they pretend their mediocrity is good when it’s obvious that it isn’t. But they are in fact potentially winners if they could find what they do well naturally and get on with developing their genuine talents. We all have them.

It’s also okay to have a number of roles where you’re not even trying to be great or better-than; you’re just one of the folks playing along, middle of the road. There are a number of roles in life where that’s a fine strategy, clubs and activities where being outstanding is not needed. We just want someone to be part of us and help us along. I have several clubs where that’s my status and it’s okay with me.

The whole thing with identity is a bit contaminated by competition: The message in school and with tests is that you have to be better-than, though they don’t always say it. The truth in life is that many roles don’t require superiority so much as simple adequacy—can you do the job? Never mind better-than; just good enough. The point of this mini essay is that I would have liked to have been told about this concept of what I call “role distribution” when I was a teenager. It might have lessened the not-very-intense but still uncomfortable inferiority complex I had then. It would have taken the pressure off to know that we all play many roles and don’t have to be good at most of them. I would have cut myself a little slack, let go of feeling guilty and ashamed about things that I couldn’t really help.

What I’ve found as a life strategy that works is to work to do better in my chosen areas of talent and enjoyment: work to celebrate in modest ways those roles that are fun but are in keeping with less actual talent; and delegating out or avoiding those roles where I have little or no talent. But it took me a while to work out this tool for promoting serenity and self-acceptance. I’d like to get the word out also because it seems to me that the general culture doesn’t make these fine discriminations and rather suggests a kind of generalized value that leaves people feeling vulnerable in their self-esteem. My self-esteem is fine because I distribute my sense of competence around to roles where they fit, and I don’t depend for my self-esteem on roles where I have little competence. That’s where I shift from being better-than to being part-of and good enough.

A bit of spiritual perspective helps, too, I must say. Feeling that there’s something wonderful going on—the evolution of consciousness in the universe—and that I get to help, even though it might only be in the tiniest way—still grants me a bigger perspective in which I can forgive and relax about my faults and limited-ness.