My ideal career would have gone something like this: In my 20s I published a number of short stories in respected literary magazines (true) that were received with acclaim (not true).
I continued to write (trueish) and published a short-story collection (untrue), and a number of novels (untrue) which established my reputation as a writer to be taken seriously (untrue).
Today I would be a respected figure on the literary scene. I would be an indispensable guest at literary events where my few pithy remarks would be greeted with nervous, admiring laughter. I would be a member of Aosdána and would receive an annual Cnuas. My prizewinning poetry (true) would be published in a slim volume (true) and would be widely read (you’re kidding).
People like Eileen Battersby would write serious articles about me in The Irish Times. When I sat at my laptop I would not have to power it up: so thrilled would it be that my hallowed fingers were about to caress its keys that it would switch itself on with a shiver of delight.
Eventually, my “private collection” of papers – that is, stuff that should have been thrown out years ago – will be packed into cardboard boxes and “donated” to a grateful nation.
Here’s the catch: throughout all of this I would have a nagging thought that what I had really wanted to be was a journalist and that being a writer just didn’t measure up to that. Similarly, when I was a journalist I had a nagging thought that what I had really wanted to be was a writer and that being a journalist just didn’t measure up to that.
It’s all absurd, of course, but I’m really talking about the insubstantial, ideal selves that I think burden many of us. Maybe you could have played football in the Premiership or been a doctor or an actor or a pilot or a champion jockey – who knows? – but you didn’t do it. You’re good at whatever you did instead, but you never quite shake off that feeling of having missed out.
Many of the careers I’ve mentioned above are admired or get a certain amount of acclaim in the media. For that reason, I suspect that this lure of the ideal has something to do with a phrase I heard once and that has stayed with me: “You want to be superior, but you fear you are not even average.”
In other words, it isn’t about the practicalities of whatever it is you wanted to be. It’s about a nagging need to be someone better than whoever you think you are.
In the end, it’s about the secret appraisal of ourselves that we all have and that we sometimes let people into but often don’t.
All I can say to people suffering from “ideal self” syndrome is that you’re in good company. But that doesn’t really help a lot, does it?
Out-of-control drinking
I don’t know what will be happening with the “Stop Out-of-Control Drinking” campaign by the time you read this but I’ve noticed some querulousness on social media about the depiction of women as the drunks in the first ads.
Had men been depicted as the out-of-control drinkers at the start, would it have been noticed, I wonder? I accept that the media are overly fond of images of young women in short skirts and high heels tottering raucously and drunkenly around places such as Temple Bar (though the Stop Out-of-Control Drinking campaign hasn’t used such images, so far as I have noticed).
Yet I doubt if anyone would have complained if stereotypical images of men had been used instead.
I recently clicked on a link for an article about signs that your partner is manipulating you. It was quite a good article except that every example was of men manipulating women.
Actually, some women are as good at the manipulation game as some men. That comes as no surprise to anybody, and it shouldn’t need stating, but stereotyping makes it drearily necessary to restate the bleedin’ obvious.
pomorain@yahoo.com Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness on the Go. His mindfulness newsletter is free by email.