Impostor syndrome. We have knees?!

Imagine yourself living in a world where you don’t see anyone’s legs and no one talks about them. Everyone goes around their life as normal, you just don’t have awareness of people’s legs.

There is a twist though. You don’t know that you have knees, you basically, can’t bend your legs in a middle.

So you grow up. When you play sports, you feel kind of odd one. Thinking that people seem to be moving easier. They are naturally much better at football and it seems like it comes easier.

Even things like walking up the stairs. People just go up and down much faster. You have always wondered to yourself why we designed it in such a weird way. It’s so unnatural to use stairs. And those chairs?! You always feel like you can’t make yourself comfortable why do others seem to be enjoying them? Beds are brilliant though, you love them more than anyone else.

So you go on about your life, growing up, always feeling a bit off in the day-to-day life because things just don’t seem right, why have we designed things the way they are so uncomfortable? In a school, you will be called a weirdo, for not being able to get up the stairs as quickly as others. Using stairs is incredibly easy after all.

Eventually, you stop playing sports, which require legs and find comfort in computer games, where you can get better than others! You don’t understand why.

You will stop using the stairs and use an elevator instead. You will slowly start dodging places which have only stair access. You will stop going to stadiums to watch your favourite team play because it’s just stairs and chairs!

And you can’t explain it. Legs are legs, stairs are stairs and chairs are chairs.

You continue your life and buy a house. You bought a bungalow, without thinking why. It just felt right.

You join working life and things go ok. You’ve learnt how to dodge stairs, and how to not attract comments when sitting on a chair in the office. You know, normal life. You take a bus to work, get to your desk, feel odd through the day, since you are aware of your discomfort on the chair, go back home and enjoy laying down on a sofa. It feels like a warm hug after an hour in cold rain.

One day you go to a conference. Like all we fat cats do. You skim through topics and talks you want to attend, some are good, some are just sales and some can be described as “just odd”.

One of the odd ones is “What are knees and do we have them?”. Remember that in this world no one is aware of their legs?

You squint your eyes, both figuratively and literally. “Knees….? That will be some new LinkedIn marketing thing. They don’t know what to make up anymore…”. And that’s how it ends for you.

It’s lunchtime break and you decide to pop in your head into a room next door. It’s that talk about knees. Well, better look what weirdos go to these. You laugh for yourself.

There are 15 people prepared for a talk. One thing which is immediately noticeable is how awkwardly everyone sits. Conference organisers cheaped out on the chairs again…

You take a sip of a coffee while, someone tries to pass through the door. “Excuse me, are you going in?”. “Sorry, I’m not sure,” you reply. “More the merrier!” replies the person passing by. They make their way to the podium and you cannot not notice that walking up those few steps to the podium took longer than you would expect. It kind of feels similar to you and your experience with stairs.

Well, there is nothing to lose except for 30 minutes. You expect the hit rate for good talks to be 30% anyway, so if it’s bad, no harm is done. You sit down on a chair next to the entrance.

The presenter starts the talk with questions which are not commonly uttered.“Raise a hand if you feel uncomfortable sitting in these chairs, but you can’t explain why.” All people around you raised their hands. I always felt that they were odd… you think to yourself.

“How many of you do not use stairs?” Your hand is first up, followed by the rest of the room.

“There are things which we started to call knees… most people have them and they help legs, the things you use to move around, to bend in a middle. They normally bend 120 degrees angle and most people have them and learn how to use them when they are children. You might have felt why some of the basic things just feel like they weren’t designed for you. It’s quite possibly because you don’t know that they exist because you never were aware of them.”

You leave the talk thinking two conflicting thoughts. First, why did it describe me so well and the second, which goes something like “This is some esoteric bullshit”. Why am I hearing about this when I’m 40. If it would be true, surely I would know about this before.

Later that day you catch up with your colleagues and you exchange stories from different talks. You mention the one about knees and you get weird looks, so you just laugh awkwardly. Just laugh those odd looks away. “They are right, it was just some esoteric nonsense”.

For a moment you get lost in the thought and you notice you were staring at the stairs to the first floor. Your lifelong nemesis.

For a lot of us, this is our first glimpse of some problems or issues. It’s a phase where we are very vulnerable and wrong things can sway us away from looking for help. It’s these moments when we can move in either direction, try to learn more and eventually look for help or just ignore it and push it away same as everyone else. Knees… such nonsense…

We have neatly named one of the symptoms “impostor syndrome” and what’s great about it is that we can understand it and notice the pattern in ourselves. Same as the awkwardness of stairs and chairs if you don’t bend your knees.

Months go by and when you mention something about knees, you will notice that most people just look at you weirdly. They have no clue what you are talking about. If you are lucky you have a partner or friend, who will entertain the conversation and thoughts. Maybe they themselves realised something wasn’t right or they just want to help you and they feel like it’s good for you to talk about it.

You will start to notice that people talk about “knee benders”, who help people learn how to bend those, so-called, knees.

You decide to give it a shot. Somehow you feel that they are just shamans of these modern days, but same as your expectation is low for the quality of conference talks, the same goes for the expectation that your life can be better.

Five years later you go on holiday with your family. You will see a cathedral you always wanted to visit. You stop in front of it and look a bit nervously. There are 60 stairs to get in. Your daughter looks at you “Dad, it’s ok, don’t worry. We know this is not easy for you. We will walk with you.”