Confidence

Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions.
Earl Gray Stevens

Deep down inside us, we know we don't have all the answers. Just like a person who has been humiliated, we boast to everyone else that we know it all in a desperate attempt to make ourselves seem good enough, and to impress our neighbors. We want to measure up to the Jones's and we don't know that the Jones's don't have any more answers than we do. We judge other people by what they say, but what other people say isn't necessarily the truth about themselves even when they beleive that it is.

Nobody knows everything, and nobody, except God, ever can. There are always events in our lives that we didn't expect and don't know what to do with them. It is part of being human to wish we were better than we are. It is also part of being human to ask questions; to want to understand the meaning of life and how the world around us works. There are endless things to learn. But we can't learn if we don't ask the right questions, even questions about why we aren't learning. And unless we are learning, we can't gain confidence in ourselves that we will be able to handle new experiences.

So many times people miss out on valuable lessons because they are too embarrassed to ask questions; they think others will laugh at them if they don't know all the answers. Don't let this happen to you. In order to grow at a person you must be open to first examining and then asking questions about all those things you are ashamed of or embarrassed about; especially the most important question of all "Why?". In order to learn, we must know what to ask, but also who to ask, for the information we need; and that in itself is often something that demands asking questions of yourself. Be open to all the questions, because nobody will ever know all the answers.