Today’s Adventure: Believing In Yourself

I’m going to get all sappy for a short minute.

I started making my own fire recently (see other post for full details). The lead-up to this began last spring when I was moving out of my first host family’s house and whenever I insisted to the Moldovans that I wanted to live alone they would say, “But who will make your fire in the winter?”

To this I would usually respond, “Um, I will. Is it hard or something?”

The answer to this varied from “No, of course not, but you don’t know how,” to “For an American, of course it’s hard,” to “Yes, it is and you will freeze to death if you don’t do it right.” While I recognize and appreciate that most of these responses came from my villagers just wanting what was best for me, they also came from the Moldovan mentality that a young woman does not have any life skills until she is married and has a baby. Until then, we are considered dependants and wanting to do anything for ourselves is just a ridiculous idea.

But here is the important and sappy part that I wanted to say: After hearing people worry for months and months that I wasn’t going to be able to make a fire, I started getting nervous that maybe I couldn’t. I mean, I’d seen the Moldovans do it and, apart form a few details of order of operations, it really is just sticking wood in a hole and lighting it on fire. I have a bachelor’s degree and have never had any major accidents, so naturally I initially didn’t have any doubt that I could do it myself if I just learned how.

But when you hear people tell you that you can’t do something for long enough, you start to believe it. You second guess yourself about being able to do the simplest task. You start having thoughts like, “Maybe they know something I don’t about it and that’s why it’s me against all of them saying I can do it.”

So I was really starting to worry that maybe I couldn’t do this thing and maybe I was going to freeze to death or have to go crawling to my host family and ask them to make my fires for me. But then something happened – I started making my own fires and guess what? It’s freaking easy. I knew it would be easy the whole time but –and here is my point – if people tell you that you can’t do something for long enough, you will start to believe it. Even something as simple as starting a damn fire. And once I realized what had happened to me there, I couldn’t help but think about all the people in the world who want to do something different but are surrounded by people who tell them that they can’t. This can have a devastating effect on how you perceive your own capabilities, and believing along with everyone else that you are not capable is a huge tragedy.

This is not really about Moldova, and could have happened for a lot of reasons in America too. My point is just, for anyone out there who wants to do something but is surrounded by people telling you that you can’t do it….do it anyway. Because you probably can if you really want to and you never know if it will turn out to be as simple as starting a fire.

Noapte Buna!