Thank God for limitations. Not yours, and not limitations in general—just mine. If some things didn’t hold me back, I’d be a pretty terrible person.
I tend toward grandiosity and self-importance, so thank God my imperfections show up everywhere. For example, my writing is okay, but I’m disabled when it comes to drawing. I have trouble with things like circles and straight lines. If I could write and draw, I’d be an insufferable ar-teest. I’d run around pontificating about creativity and art all the time.
I’m charming and funny, but I have a temper. I calm down and apologize quickly, but that doesn’t help when my short fuse blows and the relationship explodes. My temper gets me into stupid kinds of trouble, the kind that most people avoid easily. Out at a club with some buddies a few years ago, I returned from the bathroom to find a strange guy occupying my seat. I politely explained that it was my chair and asked if I could sit down. He didn’t budge. Most people would have asked him again to move, perhaps even more politely. Not me. I started shouting things I don’t feel comfortable writing down here. Dude stands up, and he’s almost a foot taller than I am. I’m alive today only because my friends intervened and offered to buy Paul Bunyan a drink.
I’m a decent-looking guy, but I gain weight just by thinking about french fries. I fought this cumbersome predisposition for years with the exercise regimen of an Olympic athlete. Then the demands of middle age—family, career, back problems, high-definition television—put the kibosh on my fifty-mile-per-week running schedule. People used to tell me I looked like Tom Cruise. I got Will friggin’ Ferrell the other day. So much for trading on my looks.
I’m smart, but I get distracted too easily and miss important details. My potential for intellectual arrogance far exceeds my other grandiose tendencies, so it’s a good thing I make mistakes that keep me humble. Just last week, I made a paperwork error that jeopardized the professional futures of four of my graduate students. After a lot of time and energy and a sleepless night or two, I figured out a way to repair my screw-up. Brain farts like this make it impossible for me to believe that I’m some kind of genius.
