Alligator hides behind a sofa - what is confidence?

Aghast I read an article of news at the consequence of a town in Brazil which had been flooded.  It was common place for this town being it is situated close to a river. The thing with the local river wildlife though is it doesn't understand houses are for people only.  So when houses are flooded all sorts of creatures pop in for a cup of tea.  In this article a lady returned home with her small son.  She thought it slightly odd her son was behind the sofa so long.  So she had a peak and saw he was gently patting the head of a  5 foot long alligator.  At this point the article didn't elaborate on whether the mother screamed or not.  Maybe she is used to over sized lizards.  What she did next was to call the fire brigate, who removed said uninvited visitor and let him free.  The fire brigade stated the obvious. "they were lucky he wasn't hungry he could of killed them."  Well it was pretty obvious.  Personally I think the alligator was being a little bit shy and his hiding behind the sofa was in relation to low confidence levels.  I mean it's not every day an alligator takes a fancy to turning up for tea.

Talking about confidence, the past few days I been wondering what exactly confidence is?  Whether it can be defined in some way.  one definition I came across was: ‘the belief in oneself and one's powers or abilities.’  But this doesn't say whether it is a character trait, something learned, or a cluster of so many different things nobody can put their finger on it.  Because every body is different. Everyone has different levels of confidence.

I wondered, if human beings were compared to computers they physically would be the machines, but how each computer runs would be the software.  Further physically, there's very little difference between people as they are all of the same species and so highly genetically compatible.  Going back to the machine analogy, confidence for humans is a key factor in how well our software is running.  What we get in education, is another basic piece of software, we might call it the fundamentals of the operating system.  But this isn't entirely true, because with education if it were an operating system it would mean only the most educated people would be functioning at the highest levels.  So confidence isn't necessarily a factor of educational achievement or ability.  Although maybe a little bit is necessary.

Then there are some people who are not just confident they appear over confident and come across as arrogant.  Where they make a show of confidence beyond the norm.  Further it may not be related to their actual ability, but if they do have such an ability then their arrogance has some kind of founding.  But is not nice to watch.  (I'm thinking of a particularly talented footballer with equal amounts of confidence/arrogance who I dislike).  It's not nice to watch because you feel the need to take a bath after seeing it.  Like witnessing the arrogance of crazy Cornell Gaddafi.  In his case it is equally frightening.  Alternatively, being quietly confident and not espousing it is the secret to being liked.  Lets not even consider the subject of success and confidence.  The internal confidence we hold of ourselves is also different from confidence other people may have in us.  I may be confident in my tight rope walking ability, although I have never actually done it.  In this case my confidence would quite rightly be labelled as "delusional" but even delusional people gain status and gain followers.  (Don't look in this direction because it ain't happening, I can see from my BLOG stats it doesn't). No the problem with delusional people is they don't know they are delusional.

So confidence is a little like an alligator hiding behind a sofa.  If it's a big three seater sofa then it may well be a pretty big alligator.  The question is unanswered.  I wish though, I were able to give confidence to someone in the form of a magic potion, but like motivation, this is a quality each individual has to find for themselves.  It may very well be confidence is an alligator and it just needs a little pat on the head.  Mind keep a broom at hand and put the fire services on speed dial, just in case it needs damping down.