confidence, pt. 1

1. Confidence is the basis of everything powerful; it is the beginning to what love lies at the end of. 爱真的需要勇气，我们都需要勇气 (quoted of course from a pop song)。勇气 I suppose means “courage,” but that’s the same thing as what I’m getting at.

2. I picked up the man’s newspaper, and he looked straight at me when he thanked me. Then he, a Parisian of about 50 or 60, broke into easy and casual conversation. I quickly announced that I did not speak his language, but after that I have to learn. Such things could never happen in New York.

3. I’m hiding in a city of people who don’t hide from anyone or anything. No place can inspire confidence and creativity as a place so full of it can. What’s so great about being modest, anyway? What is humility except a willingness to see the other’s point of view and to adapt to it?

4. But if this group of people is really so damn secure, why is it so afraid of change? It may believe strongly in the rightness of its current practices – its attention to detail in culture, its relative (if not by much) imperviousness to commercialism, its patience and openness. And as change approaches – as immigrants flow in and foreign competition strengthens – people are starting to have to make sacrifices they don’t think should be necessary. My guess, though, is that the culture of ease is strong enough to survive even if all of Sarkozy’s proposals go through. I may be wrong. After all, what’s happened to any supposed American culture?