In Laman's Terms: I Am Enough And So Are You

An image from Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, one of my favorite movies, that fits this headline beautifully.

In Laman's Terms is a new weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

One of the most unexpected parts about the release of It Chapter Two is how it's led me to reflect on how much I've grown as a person since the release of the first It movie. In the two years between the two Pennywise movies, I've managed to direct a read-through of a play I've written, travel on my own for the first time and get my first ever paid writing gig, among other accomplishments. It's not long ago that I was wondering if I would ever be able to drive an automobile and now I've got my very own car and driver's license. All of that in just the two-year span in between two movie adaptations of a single Stephen King novel.


I'm not saying all just to make this edition of In Laman's Terms a bunch of prolonged bragging. Rather, being reminded of all of this in the wake of It Chapter Two's release fascinated me because of how often I grapple with the feeling of not being enough. I'm constantly plagued by the feeling that I'm not living up to my potential or not doing everything I can. The fact that my own form of Autism gives me my own set of difficulties I have to deal with ony a daily basis occasionally instills a further sense of inadequacy in myself. Compounding such emotions is that I'm always comparing myself to my friends or famous individuals in my age range who have their own unique accomplishments (like getting a certain job or getting married or what not) in a negative manner that leaves me feeling like all I'm doing with my one and only life is wasting it.

So it was nice to get a reminder that I have actually gotten some forward momentum in my life over the last two years. Even keeping that in mind, I know I'll certainly be plagued by those feelings of inadequacy again in the future. Like hot weather in Texas, such emotional experiences are unavoidable. However, it isn't just through It Chapter Two that the concept of reminding myself of my self-worth despite my own insecurities has emerged. Today in my Contemporary Women's Literature class, my professor kicked the course on a heady note by asking the class "Why do we love literature" before shifting into a conversation about three forces in our lives that are constantly interacting with one another. These three forces are:

Cultural Change
Life Periods
Personal Growth

These elements are constantly influencing our lives and who we are as people. I've always been aware of and contemplating these constructs but seeing them written out on a whiteboard like that was utterly startling. To see explicit names applied to things I'd been so often tormented by, it was a surreal experience that quickly turned into a reassuring experience. After all, if there's names for these ideas, then that means that other people have grappled with feeling like their Personal Growth doesn't totally match where they should be in their own Life Period. Turns out, that was a prominent part of the professor's subsequent lecture, complete with her delivering plenty of stories about how she dealt with these three elements in her own life.

This lecture reinforced to me the idea of defining yourself by your own achievements and how they stack up with your specific set of circumstances rather than adhering to just one set-standard for what you must achieve at the age of twenty, thirty and so on. It's an idea that keeps creeping into my life, to the point that one of the most poignant moments of Pleasantville comes in its ending where Tobey Maguire's protagonist's mother sobs over feeling like she was "supposed to be more" now that she's forty-year-old only for Maguire's character to reassure her that there isn't a single ideal way to be forty-years-old. Your own Life Period is specific to you and so should your own concept of Personal Growth.

That's a truth that both my Contemporary Women's Literature professor and Tobey Maguire in Pleasantville understand and it's one I'm trying to consistently accept as well. After all, it is the truth, even if I recognize that instilling a sense of constant self-satisfaction is easier said than done. But at least the release of It Chapter Two has allowed me a group of achievements I can turn to when I feel truly blue about my own Personal Growth while my Contemporary Women's Literature class has helped to crystallize parts of this thought process like never before. While I work on making sure I understand my self-worth on a constant basis, let me close out this week's In Laman's Terms by saying this to every single one of you reading this piece:

You are good.
So are your achievements.
You have worth as a person.
You are loved.