Earlier this week, our good friend Joe Galitsky forwarded me a e-mail with a extract from Rob Brezsny's book "Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia". It was about "brag therapy":
Grab a good listener or a recording device, and boast extravagantly about yourself for at least 20 minutes. Expound in exhaustive detail why you're so wonderful and why the world would be a better place if everyone would just act more like you.
Don't be humble or cautious. Go too far. Heap extreme glory on yourself. Brazenly proclaim the fabulous qualities about you that no one has ever fully articulated or appreciated. Don't forget to extol the prodigious flaws and vices that make you so special.
So, we went for it. Here's mine:
Oh, sure, I can break concrete blocks with my bare hands. I can compose sonnets and haiku. I can write and sing and play songs, I can make fire dance, can get beautiful women to seduce me, can convince computers to do my biding, and can relieve aches and pains with my skillful touch.
But those aren't my real special powers.
I can navigate the subways of Osaka, New York, and San Francisco. I can vault over low railings. I can do pushups on my fingertips. I can sweat copper pipe. I know what a cosine is. I know how to use jumper cables to start a car with a dead battery. I know the difference between a regular and Phillips screwdriver. I know a hawk from a handsaw, at least when the wind is southerly.
I can do the Vulcan hand salute. I can do the Time Warp. I know the name the Elves have for Gandalf. I know Luke Skywalker's X-wing's call sign.
I can get to the end of the old Space Harrier video game on just a few quarters. I can throw and catch a baseball (thanks Dad). I can do a couple of magic tricks. I know all the words to American Pie (or at least, I used to). I know the Morse Code for SOS.
I can swim. I can tie my shoes. I can do long division. I can run for miles without stopping.
I can attract every other mass in the universe with a force that is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between us.
And I can do it all while continuing to coordinate the metabolism of billions of cells, miles of nerves and blood vessels, the metabolism,the backstage tricks that create the show.