My son, YaYa called me after school to tell me that the oral report he has yet to present is “not good enough.” The disappointment and rejection came through the phone line loud and clear. He further explained that the visual component of “everyone else’s” oral report was at a much more professional quality than his. There was a 3D Eiffel Tower, an elaborate bridge, and many more. My heart ached in hearing his reaction to being “not good enough” before even starting his presentation merely because his 4-leaf clover complete with multiple illustrations discussing the strengths and weakness of Dublin, Ireland was not of the same dimension. I hoped that the teacher’s grading would be heavier on content than artistic abilities for although I have contributed a bit to the efforts of his project, I have tried to keep a mostly hands-off approach. Truthfully, I don’t think that YaYa would have it any other way.
The traumatic event had me revisiting this post which I have been trying to write for upwards of two months now on a TED talk from October 2010 by Dr. Brené Brown, on Wholeheartedness. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it.
When I first heard this talk, it gripped me as if Dr. Brown was talking to me and to me alone. It wasn’t as if her words and the concepts she presented were far reaching. I listened and nodded in a knowing way, wholeheartedly agreeing with all that she said. Wholehearted? Yeah, that’s me, I thought.
But when her talk reached the worthiness discussion — which took her talk one step deeper — I found myself in tears.