Many years ago, an elderly woman named Terry lived across the street from my family. Terry was a lovely, grandmotherly type to my young daughters. The sort of woman who every year came by to let my girls know Santa had dropped off gifts for them at her house by accident.
She was a peach.
One sunny afternoon, while sitting on her back porch enjoying the sound of the birds in the trees, Terry confided in me that she’d held membership in that remarkable club known as Rosie the Riveter. This came up very naturally, since Terry knew I was rebuilding warbirds at the time for Tom Reilly at his facility in Kissimmee, Florida.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I spent the war years making cam shafts for airplane engines.”
She then proceeded to explain the process of creating, refining, measuring, and polishing steel shafts that would be shipped off in great wooden crates to be installed in the engines of fighter aircraft.
When she finished her story, eyes gleaming with excitement brought on by more memories than she could relay, and pride at knowing she had contributed to one of the greatest workforce mobilizations in human history, I asked what I thought was a pertinent question.
“Do you know what a cam shaft does?”
“No,” she answered. She lit a cigarette and chuckled at the question. Her tone made it clear she didn’t care what they were for either. She’d done her part. She’d done it well. End of story.
Terry was typical of so many young women who came up during the 1940s. They were raised to be homemakers, mothers, teachers, and receptionists. Then one day they found themselves in factories driving rivets, shaping metal, building complex machines and, in the case of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), flying them away.
In the process they experienced doubt, discouragement, nervousness, broken nails, ruined stockings, stained clothing, and hairdos that were simply destroyed by what had previously been thought of as men’s work. They also developed a sense of pride. They found confidence in themselves and their newfound abilities.
Confidence is earned over time. It is performance based. As our familiarity with a task increases and our facility at performing that task improves, we develop pride in our successes and confidence that we can repeat that success on demand.
The only people who are confident without accomplishment are egotists and sociopaths — people who are best avoided, if at all possible. They are blowhards who are often, bereft of talent, knowledge, or skill. They talk a good game but never seem to be able to come up with the goods when needed.
Terry was the real deal. She stepped into an environment she was totally unprepared for, challenged herself to meet the standards set for the position, and knocked it out of the park.
She has been gone for well over a decade now. I miss that woman. I truly do.
This discussion of pride and confidence is one I honestly believe we should be having more often. These are hard-earned gifts available to each of us. But they cannot be gifted. They can’t be passed down in a will or shared by virtue of strength or wealth. We have to discover them for ourselves. One attempt, one failure, turned to one success at a time.
A young man recently confided in me that he would like to become a professional pilot, but he did not feel he had the judgment or skill to do the job. It’s worth noting that he is a private pilot and owns an airplane. He is not without accomplishments. He is not lacking in potential. He is, however, unsure of himself to the degree he has wasted years wondering if he has what it takes to reach his goal.
This sense of doubt and indecision has derailed his wish to pursue the training and educational commitment required to reach that goal. He is locked in a state of analysis paralysis. Mostly because he doesn’t believe in himself. His reality is a thin shadow of his dreams for the simple reason he hasn’t found the secret Terry and her peers became so adept at.
Try. That’s all it takes. Just try. We may fail, but we will have tried. We will know for sure if we can make the cut or not. But if we never try, if we never risk failure, if we never get our hands dirty doing the work that calls out to us, we will never know what life could have been like had we taken the risk, tempted fate, and put in our best effort.
The irony of this, of course, is that this young man is a pilot. He has experienced the damp palms and jittery innards that come when our CFI steps out of the aircraft for the first time, leaving the engine running and us in the pilot’s seat. He knows what it is to make that crosswind turn onto downwind, swallow hard, and realize he’s in the deep end of the pool all alone. He landed safely. Took off again and landed a second time. Then a third.
Eventually he experienced the butterflies and self-doubt that occur on practical test day. When all the skills we’ve learned and practiced come into play for real. Our calculations correct, our procedures in order, our decision-making on point, we fly.
A few hours later we depart for home. A white piece of paper in hand. Our temporary certificate. Success has been achieved.
While humility may be an attractive personality trait, we would all do well to discover what we’re good at. What we take pride in. The things we can be confident of in our hearts and minds.
That confidence can make all the difference in how our lives ebb and flow to find our ultimate place in the world. As was the case for Terry and her peers.
It can be said with sincerity: They pitched in to save the world. They found their potential along the way. Then become truly proud of who they were and confident they could do whatever was asked of them.
We should all be so well inclined.
