The village was alive with the beats of drums. White lines stretched across the red earth, marking the route the race was to take. The women had prepared feasts, waiting to welcome the champions from their households with hearty meals. And the gong signifying the beginning of the race had just sounded. Adisa! Adisa! The entire village seemed to reverberate with the chant of only one name. It was no surprise, actually. He had always been the fastest runner.
But what played out turned out different from the story everyone had already carved in their minds. Alao was nearing the forefront, always a step ahead of Adisa. And while he was a strong runner in his own right, everyone agreed that he wasn’t as good as their champion. Eyes trailed both boys as they completed the first, second, and third laps. Everything seemed to be back to normal for a short while as Alao missed a few steps. But in the span of time it takes to blink, the drum had been beaten. Someone had crossed the finish line. And his name was Alao.
In life, we run multiple races. Within every field, there are always things to do, milestones to achieve. And because we rarely do life in isolation, we find ourselves having to run our races in conjunction with other people. What began as the fulfillment of our private dreams becomes a game of who is better, who is more adept at completing a set of tasks. One would also expect that as people refine their skills, they would become increasingly confident in themselves. After all, they are doing well, even comparatively with others.
But what happens when a person holds the receipts, yet their internal world refuses to believe they didn’t grab hold of them by mistake?
Alao might have just won the race. But after the first round of congratulations, the conversation wasn’t about how fast he was. Instead, people crowded around in small groups, pondering what might have gone wrong with Adisa. Including him.
I might just know the route better. I got lucky this time. The tiny voice in his head kept repeating.
We tend to frame imposter syndrome as the feeling of being a fraud despite evidence of competence. But perhaps there is another, quieter version of it: the inability to accept competence even when the evidence keeps piling up.
You got the job. You made the highest sales that month. You won the award. But somewhere, instead of patting yourself on the back, you wonder, why me? And beyond that question, there’s an underlying emotion: fear. You worry whether the luck you’re currently riding on will shoot you to the top, establishing you as one of the best in the room, only to suddenly drop you back to rock bottom. And then everyone will realize that you never really belonged in the room of talented people at all.
It doesn’t even matter that you’re way past your starting point. You never really stop to consider that you have gotten a lot better over the years. You’re so stuck in the unedited movie of all your shortcomings that even when you’re aware that you’re only privy to the highlight reels of everyone else, you still manage to convince yourself that they have themselves together in a way you don’t. It doesn’t matter that you now possess the skills you once thought were inconceivable. You’re too busy measuring your movement against everyone else’s that you forget the most important metric: your own past self.
Alao didn’t get to the point of thinking “why me, not Adisa?” in one day. It started with the comparisons. The subtle cues that suggested to him that whenever he managed to achieve something, there must have been an outside force helping him. And even when there wasn’t, there was always a bigger stage out there, so he mustn’t become complacent. His friends reminded him of how Ade’s legs were longer when he managed to climb the tallest tree. It is no wonder that he has solidified the image of being good, but not good enough, in his mind.
It’s mostly not just your mind playing tricks on you. Our internal voices are often a reflection of external ones. And while not all cases like this stem from people constantly reminding you that there is always someone better out there, it’s not a totally abstract scenario. It doesn’t really matter whether there is an audience to gauge your prowess or not, because they have already imprinted an evaluation system onto your mind—one that constantly reminds you of how everyone else is better.
All hail Alao, our newly crowned King of Boys. They were words meant to make him feel proud, fulfilled, even. But why was he so uncomfortable? Why did he feel like there was a hidden dagger somewhere within them? It sounded more like, “King of Boys, for now, until the rightful owner takes back his crown.”
From then on, the fear of failure becomes more than just an unwillingness to fail. It becomes a threat hanging over your head, waiting to strike at any time. Why you started in the first place might not even matter anymore, as long as people don’t eventually have a chance to say, “I knew he wasn’t that good anyway.” And the real danger is that all of this unfolds inside your head. They might be genuinely praising you, but all you can think of is what they will say when you eventually fail. Because you’re convinced that you will.
Beyond all these mental gymnastics, there’s a question I think we should ponder: Who exactly are you trying to convince? Yourself? Your parents? Your colleagues? The people who told you that you weren’t good enough? Your own mind, which is convinced that you don’t deserve to be one of the best? An audience that probably doesn’t even know you’re performing for them?
When your achievements become evidence in a court where you’re always trying to prove yourself, no amount of them can help you win the case. Maybe they’ll even make it worse.
It might not be easy to retrain your mind. But it is possible to be good. Just good. Not better than everyone else. Not the best person in the room. Just good enough to know that what you have earned is yours. Because if the only way you can feel good about yourself is by being the best in the room, what happens when someone else eventually overtakes you?
Perhaps the race was never supposed to be against everyone else.
Perhaps Alao doesn’t need to convince himself that he is the fastest runner in the village.
Perhaps he only needs to believe that he won the race.