A MINIMALIST, A JAPANESE COWBOY, AND AN ARROGANT AMERICAN WALK INTO A MUSEUM

…The sun is completing its coin toss into to ocean, our group outlined in twilight. Looking over the cowboy, surveying his staunch temperament, I realize that his confidence is simply an external display of a rich interior life—congruency between his internal and external worlds. Arrogance, on the other hand, is the opposite of confidence: a veneer of composure, incongruence at its zenith. This is why a confident man is able to coalesce with any group, anywhere; an arrogant man, nowhere at all.

Confidence holds up under scrutiny, whereas arrogance fractures with the slightest crack. And, as human beings, we all have cracks. Sooner or later, a spotlight is shone and the arrogant man’s pomposity is exposed, seeping through the veneer, while the confident man just admires the beauty of his flaws.

– Joshua Fields Millburn 

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