Breaking Down the Pedestal

“There is no elevator to success; you have to take the stairs.”

In my previous post, I mentioned that I have challenged myself to stop excessively looking up to other people.

I write “challenged” as opposed to “taught” because honestly, I haven’t managed to fully achieve this quite yet.

Consider it an accumulative result of growing up in the Silicon Valley, adhering to Korean honorific attitudes, as well as partaking and engaging in subcultures that encourage a perceived dichotomy of us versus them, or at least younger versus older.

For a long while, I predominately saw myself as someone noticeably small, emotionally unstable, and merely average in terms of talent and intelligence. It has been a long climb not from the ground floor, but rather from the basement, to start envisioning what may lie ahead on the upper levels. As implied, I have been busy taking the stairs towards my own perception of “success”.

However, I have not been expecting others to do the same. Especially during those late nights when my mind is spinning in circles and I cannot fall asleep, I tend to wonder why I seem to have such a hard time being “normal” — why must I experience depressive episodes, anxiety attacks, and carry the burden of a complex past? Although I am well-aware of the filtering effects of social media and my limited visibility into everyone’s highlight reel, it’s so easy to be tougher on myself than I am on anyone else. Hence, here comes the escalator for all those who appear to be ordinary — exclusively built for those whom I have never encountered downstairs in the basement.

But the real issue exists in conjunction with that darn elevator. Although I firmly believe that respect should be a given towards elders (including but not limited to grandparents, work supervisors, and our own educators), I have been applying this practice to so many peers beyond those categories that it essentially turns their starting point into the top of a pedestal. Up there, practically everything they do is glorified in my mind; even if they have wronged me, it is likely that I proceeded to place full blame on myself and grant them complete benefit-of-the-doubt. Sounds toxic to say the least.

Thus, I need to take a moment to ask myself: what have each of these people done to justify this practice? Is it actually well-warranted, or am I foolishly tying it to something like a few more years in age, a more privileged background, or an impressive bullet point on their resume? I have begun to stop and think about where each individual starting point lies and which of the three I am directing to when I meet someone new.

Is it the stairs,
the escalator,
or the elevator?

Also:
What good does the pedestal do if we never once met in the lobby?