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WEAVING THE CLOAK OF CONFIDENCE/Rosa Coll

“Don’t be so presumptuous, che!”, we used to say in the south of the continent years ago, to stop those who got too close --not so much physically, even though it could also be physical-- as soon as they intruded with their words; those we just met and who meddled with an opinion on our lives and even dared to give us advice. They are people who can’t locate themselves, who don’t know their place; or they are too far away and one neither sees nor hears them when they would be seen and heard; or they are on top of us suffocating our sight and our hearing. In a word, the timid, for they characteristically believe that they can compensate for their shyness, their fuzzy image, with that forced presence.

There are also those --or are they the same?-- that take too much liberty with some tool they constantly use, be it a car, a saw or a motorcycle, and they end up crashing, cutting off a finger or loosing their lives. Step by step we start gaining the trust of something we once believed unmanageable. We never dreamed of handling that thing! And suddenly --for realization is always sudden-- we feel sure. We did it! We know how to drive and from there to saying “I know what I’m doing!”, is just one short step. Pride comes first. Wasn’t it recently discovered that the pilot of the Alaska Airlines plane which fell into the sea less than a year ago, shortly before it was to land in San Francisco, knew almost from the beginning of the flight that the stabilization system was malfunctioning and suppressed the automatic system because he thought he could stabilize the plane? That’s the way we are, the nagual Carlos Castaneda used to say.

And yet there are others --including ourselves-- the timid men and women, for whom life is generally not going so well. How could it be going well with two steps back for each step forward? And when something good finally does happen to us, the euphoria is such that we just start running without looking left or right, and when we cross the rails, we don’t see the train coming. No sobriety at all, only egomania.

However, things don’t necessarily have to be that way. We have the confidence of the warrior, the cloak of confidence, which is not blind at all. It sees the train coming and doesn’t cross the rails. It knows that the car, the saw and the motorcycle are dangerous machines, and therefore respects them, without believing that it is their master. Confidence, in the true sense of the word, is linked to respect, respect for others, respect for things and, of course, respect for oneself. The presumptuous ones do not respect; nobody taught them how to respect. The timid do not respect; to overcome their timidity they run us down. Confidence knows how to wait, for waiting is precisely what it’s about: to know that our intent will be realized. Waiting is a facet of strength, to act hastily is a facet of weakness. Waiting is modest and sober, both modesty and sobriety go hand in hand.

Some suckled confidence with their mother’s milk, others have to build it. The first option is ideal, of course, yet the second one is a constant, fascinating adventure: to build confidence step by step, to weave the cloak, literally weave it with a thread that moves to and from, plaited, hooked and knotted solidly, covering a surface where there was nothing before. Where before there was no confidence, a lack of confidence, now there is confidence. To weave the cloak is a labor, it takes effort, time, dedication and discipline. Each knot involves the movement of a finger; step by step the cloak is being woven, step by step I’m molding this awareness that I can, were I can’t used to reign. The woof is so tight that there is no available space in it, there is not even room to harbor a shadow of a doubt. The cloth of the cloak is made of pure power and nothing but power. What a relief, what a burst of joy when I discover, see, feel that I can change my way of thinking, that I can place myself in a position so astonishingly new, so foreign to my habitual way of being, as is the conviction that I can. Thus, by moving my legs, by bending down, by moving my arms, my forearms, my hands, I tie the thread and I adjust it to weave the closed woof of that magical pass called the Cloak of Confidence. And even without the magical pass, while walking, sitting, typing, cooking, I likewise weave the cloak; I even continue to weave it without a single physical movement. I hang it in the closet, next to my other coats; of course, this is the only one that I use every day. And my life is magically transformed. I forgot to say that I weave the cloak with two threads: one is the thread of power, color orange, and the other is the thread of sobriety, color blue.

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By Rosa Coll, Published in Fraktalum No. 4

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