The Gift of Insecurity

“Your biggest fear will be the rescue of you.”

– Incubus,
Echo

 

 

In the unforgiving, blinding deserts of Nefud, a band of Bedouin Arab tribesmen were tiredly riding their camels. At the forefront of the march was, oddly, an Englishman, named Thomas Edward Lawrence.

He appeared no differently than the tribe, as he was dressed in a traditional keffiyeh (headdress) and thawb (robe). He behaved like them too, as he spoke their language fluently and embraced their culture and customs. 

They had been marching for nearly two days without a fresh supply of water, trudging through heat stroke and sunburn. It would take them at least a day until they reached the closest well. Lawrence himself nearly fell out of consciousness.

At one point, Lawrence noticed that even the camels were unwilling to keep moving. He decided to dismount and give themselves, and their camels, a rest. That was when he realized that one of the camels had no rider. 

The missing rider was Gasim, a fellow tribesman who wasn’t well-liked. He was a man that Lawrence described as “grumbling”, “bad-tempered”, “suspicious”, and “brutal”. He was “a man whose engagement I regretted.”

Gasim must have fallen off his camel some time during their long march, and no one seemed to care or even notice. Gazing at the boundless desert, Lawrence was afraid that Gasim might have already been dead, given the extreme heat.

Right there and then, Lawrence had to decide whether Gasim was worth the trouble in searching. Of course, the tribe, and even Lawrence himself, couldn’t have been happier without him. But as a leader — moreover a foreign one — he understood that it was doubly important for him to show the Arabs that he upheld their standards better than the Arabs themselves. Only then he could win their trust and effectively guide them into battle. 

Despite being severely dehydrated, Lawrence turned back and retraced his steps, frantically searching the arid desert for a sign of life, or death. After nearly two hours, he finally saw something moving. It was Gasim, “nearly blinded”, broken, and mumbling incomprehensibly. Lawrence handed him what little remained of his water, and seated him on his camel. Guided by his compass, Lawrence brought themselves back to their group.

The journey back was far from pleasant. Along the way, Gasim yelled and mumbled incessantly, until Lawrence finally snapped. Lawrence struck him in the face, and threatened to leave him behind if he didn’t shut up. 

Once they arrived, an elder of the tribe shook his head and said of Gasim, “For that thing, not worth a camel’s price.” But at the end of the day, Lawrence was right in that his decision earned him the Arabs’ respect, as well as their affection.

They saw for themselves that they could trust Lawrence to sacrifice his own life for someone of no use to them like Gasim. And with that, they would have no doubt that Lawrence would be the right leader to follow in any situation that they would find themselves in.

 

 

***

 

 

T.E. Lawrence, or more commonly romanticized in popular culture as Lawrence of Arabia, is renowned for his role as a liaison officer between the Arabs and the British Empire during the Arab Revolt, which was the Arabs’ fight for independence from the Turks.

(Though, on a side note, the British ended up breaking their promise of independence for the Arabs, instead dividing the newly-acquired territories with the French, as per Sykes-Picot Agreement. This left Lawrence heartbroken and disillusioned.) 

Among Lawrence’s greatest achievements in the revolt were his pioneering of guerilla warfare tactics, which were highly effective for the generally-outnumbered Arabs in raiding and ambushing the Turks. Following the revolt, he published his memoir titled Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which is widely praised as one of the most important literary texts written on the subject of war.

Lawrence is also praised for his leadership among the Arabs, particularly for his invaluable sense of empathy. Winning the trust of Bedouin Arabs was not an easy feat, especially in war. They were prone to infighting and had trouble trusting their own tribesmen, let alone strangers from foreign lands. Many before Lawrence had failed, finding it impossible to blend in with the Arabs.

Owing to his deep fascination and knowledge of Arab culture, he was able to seamlessly assimilate with the native tribes. He dressed, ate, slept, spoke and laughed like a fellow Arab. He even genuinely shared their dreams of liberating themselves from the Turks. 

In his personal interactions, he was agile at building rapport, catering himself to each person’s ego and personality, and positioning himself as not only a trustworthy leader, but as a good friend.

All of these elements made him an esteemed leader among the Arabs. As he remarked, “(The Arabs) taught me that no man could be their leader except he who ate the ranks’ food, wore their clothes, lived with them, and yet appeared better in himself.”

But Lawrence’s greatest strength, or his empathy, likely didn’t spring from nowhere. It was borne out of his most troubling insecurity, in that he was born out of wedlock. 

Lawrence’s father had an extramarital affair with his family maid, running away to raise five boys together under the surname, “Lawrence.” The illegitimacy of Lawrence’s family was a well-guarded secret from the Victorian society that they existed in, which shunned such children, denying their enrollment in certain schools, and their involvement in certain professions, especially within the government. 

Understandably, Lawrence grew up feeling impure and tainted. And only adding salt to his wounds was his overbearing mother. Though Lawrence was the second-born child, he was somehow seen as the family’s only hope to redeem their honor.

In any case that Lawrence displeased his mother, he would be whipped. It was a punishment that his brothers were exempt from, and was reserved for Lawrence only.

As his younger brother, Arnold induced, “The strongest impression I have is that his life has been injured by his mother.”

 

 

***

 

 

It goes without saying that we all have our crosses to bear. Each and every one of us has our own deep-seated insecurities about who we are, about our worth, our history, about our bodies. 

These insecurities can feel crippling at times. We might spend our entire lives running away from ourselves. It seems as though we have no other choice but to feel like an imposter most of the time, as we wear different personas and hide who we truly are from the rest of the world. 

We might hate ourselves, even wishing that we never existed in the first place. 

As difficult as it can be, it’s worth remembering that you’re not alone in struggling with your insecurities, that your insecurities are the very things that grant you membership into our imperfect human race. 

It’s worth reminding yourself, too, that your insecurities can be a gift, if you decide that they are. Ask yourself, then, how can you be more accepting of your insecurities in a way that can benefit yourself, as well as the world around you?

In Lawrence’s case, we can only imagine what it must have been like in his shoes, growing up in shame, and learning that “Lawrence” wasn’t his actual surname. He hated himself, and never felt at ease being who he truly was. His entire life was an attempt to escape his identity, by putting on different personalities that could never truly fit him. 

But whether he was conscious of it or not, Lawrence was able to leverage his insecurities to an extent that he became an effective leader during the Arab Revolt. Privately, his involvement in the revolt came not only from his genuine concern for the Arabs, but was also motivated by his desire to restore his family’s honor.

And because he was insecure about himself, he was able to comfortably adapt to what people or situations demanded of him.

As author John E. Mack commented, “I have little doubt that his extraordinary capacity to move flexibly among peoples of other classes and races, to understand or intuit their needs and hopes, their feelings and dreams, derived to a large degree from the complex and unsettled elements of his own identity. This capacity seemed to know no bounds. He could be what people needed him to be, for he knew what they felt, what they were.”

You can choose to make yourself, rather than let your insecurities make you. You can let the pain of your insecurities inform and guide you, instead of merely stinging you.

For example, if you’re insecure about your shyness around people, you can use this to your advantage in building your social skills, in that you can be more attentive in listening to the other person, and you can be more thoughtful in the words that you speak. 

Or perhaps, you’re insecure about your natural physical appearance. You can use this to build your self-confidence, in that you are comfortable with yourself, warts and all, and are less concerned about what people think of you. You can use this to weed the shallow people out of your life too, who aren’t interested in you for who you are on the inside.

Understand, though, that accepting your insecurities is a conscious and never-ending process. There will never come a point in your life where you feel absolutely comfortable in your own skin. This is something that you have to keep working on until the very end of your life. 

Who you are is who you will ever be, in life, and in death. So, you’d might as well treat yourself kindly, and do what you can to feel at home with yourself. 

As epic as Lawrence’s journey was during the Arab Revolt, the future that followed was tragically unwelcoming. His achievements in the revolt, and his fame as Lawrence of Arabia, only troubled him and intensified his discomfort with his own identity. 

He would spend the last few years of his life living under different names. But the further he ran away from himself, the more lost he seemed to feel. As he wrote to his publisher, “I find myself wishing all the time that my own curtain would fall.”

The only activity that made him feel alive was riding his motorcycle at top speed without a helmet on. When he was scolded by a friend, saying he would end up “breaking his blinking neck”, he only replied, “Well, better than dying in bed.”

At just forty-six years old, this was exactly how he died.

During his last daring motorcycle ride, Lawrence unexpectedly encountered two boys on their bicycles in the middle of the road. Trying to avoid the boys, he gripped hard on the brakes and veered wildly, flinging him off the handlebars. He smashed his head on the road, and again on a tree trunk. 

Lawrence was later buried in the small village of Moreton, Dorset, not far from where the accident took place. The name that is spelled out on his headstone is simply his birthname, “T.E. Lawrence”. 

“Although he had tried to escape his famous name since the war, he could no longer escape it in death,” wrote biographer Ranulph Fiennes. “It is ironic that he had tried on many names and identities, and yet never had the chance to fit comfortably into the one he was given at birth.”