The Confidence We Borrow

Some projects begin long before we dare to give them a chance. A book we write in bits and pieces. A trip that comes up in every conversation but never gets a date. Something we want to learn, a different way of living, a decision we keep postponing. For a while, all of it exists in a fairly comfortable place: our imagination. There, we can still get it right. There, no one can tell us we have made a mistake yet.

The difficulty comes when we have to move from imagining to doing.

I know that delay. How easily I can find a sensible reason to wait a little longer. There is not enough time; a few things need sorting out; I am not ready yet. Each argument, taken on its own, sounds reasonable. Together, they can fill years. And while we prepare to begin, life keeps happening.

I have been thinking about the people who appear at that moment. Those who listen to what we want to do and, instead of joining us in explaining why we cannot do it yet, ask a question that changes the conversation.

“What would you need to take the first step?”

It does not sound like much. But some questions leave us without the shelter of the answers we had already rehearsed.

In stories, we recognize these people immediately. Merlin beside Arthur. Gandalf beside Frodo. Virgil accompanying Dante through a place that would be impossible to navigate without help. We call them teachers, guides, mentors. We know their presence will matter, even before we understand how.

In everyday life, they tend to be less conspicuous. No music announces their arrival. It might be someone we speak to often or a person we barely know. A friend who reads a few pages and asks for the next ones. A teacher who takes seriously an interest we mention almost apologetically. Someone who has been through a similar difficulty and stays long enough to listen.

Sometimes we recognize what they did much later.

When I think about the changes a person can go through, I find it hard to imagine them happening entirely alone. Even our most intimate decisions carry someone else’s voice. A conversation, an observation, the confidence of someone who saw a possibility while we were still taking stock of our limitations.

I like to think that, for a time, this confidence is something we borrow. We use it to move forward until we can build our own.

Something similar happens with a project. At first, it is often fragile and hard to explain. We know everything it lacks, and being so close to it can make us unfair. Someone looks at it from the outside, finds something worthwhile, and takes the trouble to point it out. Later, they may tell us that a section needs to be started again, that we need to learn more or reconsider a decision. Having believed in us also allows them to ask more of us.

I value that combination: feeling that someone expects something of us while also making room for our stumbles.

Because encouraging someone to change takes care. Some advice arrives too soon. Other people’s enthusiasm can overlook what we are actually able to sustain. To support us well, someone needs to listen closely enough to distinguish an excuse from a real limit. Sometimes they help us move forward; at other times, they help us find a smaller step.

Perhaps that is why a mentor can be any age. The experience we need does not always correspond to the number of years someone has lived. Younger people can restore a curiosity we had lost. Some people, without meaning to, teach us to ask questions again.

There is also a moment when that relationship changes. We begin making decisions without consulting someone about every detail. We set aside a piece of advice. We discover our own way of carrying on. I imagine that supporting someone well includes accepting that moment, even when they take a path we would not have chosen.

I wonder how often I have received that kind of help without fully acknowledging it. How many remarks made in passing have ended up influencing a page, a project, a decision that I later described as entirely my own.

And I wonder whether I have ever played that part for someone else without knowing it.

Perhaps someone is telling us about something they still find hard to say aloud. They present it as a passing thought, play it down, quickly change the subject. We could let it pass. Or we could return to it and ask them to tell us a little more.

I think some changes begin that way: someone takes seriously a possibility we still only mention in a quiet voice.

After that, we will have to do the work, live through the doubts, and take the step. But how different that first morning feels when we know there is someone we can tell: “I’ve started.”

Christian Ruggeri