I’ve been processing my Comic-Con experience for over a week now. I had many takeaways, but the biggest thing was seeing people in real life. Here’s what I mean.
On paper, the cast and crew I worked with have impressive credentials. They’re producers, accomplished artists, a pageant queen, and TV actors. I was intimidated at first, but it turned out, in real life, none of those credentials mattered. They were just normal people. Passionate, creative, hilarious, hard-working–and normal. They also looked different from their headshots. Double chins, overbites, wrinkles, gray hair, extra weight. Without makeup or flattering camera angles, they also looked like normal people.
We all felt the imposter syndrome. And we bonded over that–with lumpia and chicken adobo. I felt fully accepted and free to be myself, like I was hanging out with my cousins. (And since I have relatives where some of the actors are from, I wondered if they were my actual cousins…)
How we see people starts with how we see ourselves. (There’s a reason loving your neighbor is directly tied to loving yourself.) Our own low self-esteem drives an “us vs. them” mentality. “We” are regular, average-looking, hard-working people, and “they” are the talented, high-maintenance, beautiful ones who think they’re better than us. But that’s a limiting belief. It keeps us from potentially inspiring relationships, and in most cases, our perception of “them” isn’t even true. I got to meet the cast and crew’s spouses and kids, and hear about their very real pain, fears, and insecurities. They even hate how they look in photos. We have so much more in common with “them” than we realize. (Plus, maybe consider that you’re “them” to someone else…)
One of the hardest things about this journey–of trying to make it as an illustrator, and pioneering a life that I hope will make an impact–is that in my social circles, I’m sometimes perceived as less of an “us,” and more of a “them.” (My sister relates to this too as she’s grown her company.) It makes relationships more complicated than they have to be. But this is me in real life:
I like making new friends and discovering people’s uniqueness. I draw pictures that tell stories, and sometimes people really like them. I’m in my 30’s and I’ve been on 2 dates in my entire life–and not even recently. I do sometimes wonder what’s wrong with me. And it hurts. But my resilient immigrant mom taught me that I can’t control if people like me, but I can control if I spend my time purposefully to make the most out of my life. If I seem confident, it’s because (a) I live by that, and (b) as Christian-cliche as it sounds, I’m firmly grounded on Jesus defining my worth.
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