The Sage Says, ‘Hey, Phony! Made ya look!’

Sage: A profoundly wise person, or, a person famed for their wisdom.

Puerto Rican Sage: A profoundly wise person, or, a person famed for their wisdom born in Puerto Rico.

Phony: a person who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives; bogus, fraudulent, having a misleading appearance

The Sage talks about confidence. She compares “True Confidence” with “False Confidence”, and then gives me a funny glare that makes me ask myself: Is my confidence True or False? And what’s the difference.

False confidence parades around disguised as true confidence. It tries to be as “True” as possible, always asking itself: What Would True Confidence Do (WWTCD)? Would true confidence laugh at that joke? Yes. So false confidence laughs. Would true confidence attend the Old Friend’s party? No. So false confidence stays home. It walks like true confidence; it talks like true confidence, but it’s not quite the same.

So what’s the difference? It’s like the difference between a replica and a human in Bladerunner. It’s minute (mine-oot), and it takes the right sorts of questions and situations to discern the two. You’ve probably seen it before: Somebody you thought was confident crumbles under pressure, or something just doesn’t quite ­add up—the whole is less than the sum of its parts. They’re the people that seem stuck.

*Harrison Ford and the replica. If you look closely, you can tell that she's being phony

The false confidence is the product of a conflict that happens within. The proprietor feels that they are insufficient and, as a response to that, they build something, a persona, an alternative reality, a sandcastle—who knows. But they build shoddy things that remind you of the last-minute products placed beside the checkout register at the 99-cent store. Like a jump rope that’s really just a shoelace with pink plastic handles.

True confidence follows no road map. It is creativity embodied.

But what’s the real tell-tale sign of false confidence? It’s Misery. Only the keeper knows the beast. It’s a terrible, agitated misery that follows false confidence around like an inbred Labrador.

You know how some of the happiest, most jovial people you know turn out to be “depressed”? That’s false confidence at its finest.

At this point, you may be wondering: Is my confidence True, or is it False?

I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but, your confidence is . . .  false. You’re a phony. I already said I’m sorry. Enjoy the rest of your night and tune in next time for: Life is a Sad Place.

Signing off.

Kakakaka! Here’s the truth: The most confident people I have ever met still embody false confidence once in a while (except for Tyler Andre! Whoop whoop) (but seriously, Ty, it’s not fair). Everybody houses a mix of both.

So, how can you tell? You must focus on what makes you miserable. What sucks the satisfaction out of your life? Which interactions, events, people, environments, situations, make you absolutely miserable? Wherever that misery lies, you have a source of your Confidence Crisis—the devil’s playground!

When you have a confidence crisis, you overcompensate by adopting false confidence, and, so on and so forth until you suffer the crisis of the 21^st century: Phoniness. And a phony life is sincerely the biggest waste of the most splendid Grand Prize you’ve ever won; it's called LIFE. (you, by the way, were the fastest sperm in a herd of a billion—think about that . . .)

What’s fantastic about all of this is that there’s a bona fide solution to it all. And it’s fairly simple. It’s modeled after the Third Law of Physics; it's been tried, tested and proved. The Puerto Rican Sage discovered it one night while drinking wine and reading Vanity Fair.

*The Sage doth come forth to profess

That’s not true, she actually discovered it three years ago when she had an encounter with her oldest friend in Mexico. The friend had a laundry list of problems—alcoholism, divorce, kids-on-drugs, too much money, etc.—and it made The Sage miserable. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t the booze, or the kids or the money, but something else. It was something within her that was going unmet in the relationship with her problematic friend—a need, unmet.

So The Sage began to explore human needs and discovered something that nobody had ever realized before. Something that would change the world forever. Something that she would eventually unveil on a hideous blog to people she doesn’t know . . . stay tuned!

Yours Sincerely,
The Messenger’s Messenger

Bernadette Messenger was born on a ranch in Bornsworth, TN to Alicia and Bruce Messenger. After graduating from Fort Milworth College in Dunesport, New Hapshire with a degree in Pediphorical Maltransportation, she moved to a small village in Fanley, where she met her husband, and the love of her life, Phil. Today, her and Phil live together happily in Mondo Canyon, where she studies Puerto Rican anthropology and raises their two children, Willard and Malia. Phil is currently unemployed.