Walt Meyer describes people who coruscate as having supreme self-confidence without the ego.
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I was asked to submit a proposal to do a TEDx and the topic I’m pitching is one that has been percolating in my brain for quite a while: how to coruscate. I thought I had a good vocabulary, but I had never heard the word “coruscate” until an interviewee used it on NPR. I had to look it up, and to save you the trouble, it means “to sparkle” and more in the sense of the way certain people sparkle and not like those pure-excuses-for-Dracula in Twilight.
Having heard the word the description of the person to whom the NPR guest had applied, I started wondering why some people sparkle. It’s not the cutest or smartest person in the room, although those qualities may help. But what is the je ne sais quoi that draws us to certain people—and I certainly don’t mean a sexual attraction—but just draws us to certain people regardless of gender?In looking watching how and why it works, I think it is something that we can and should promote in everyone. I suppose you could call coruscation supreme self-confidence without the ego. A friend who is into one of those self-help programs says they’d call it being “present.” Being focused on what you are doing or who you are with, not scattering your energy to several things at once including your cell phone.
Coruscation could also be summed up in: “I’m okay with who I am and don’t need your approval.” Not in an arrogant, “I don’t care what you think” way, but a quieter, “I’m good with me. If you want to be good with me that’s cool, too,” sort of way.
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It’s being happy with yourself and your mission in life. It’s knowing who you are and what you want and going after it, even if you’re not there yet.
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It’s being happy with yourself and your mission in life. It’s knowing who you are and what you want and going after it, even if you’re not there yet.
One of the people I think of when I think of people who coruscate was an Army brat. More accurately a Navy brat, although that phrase hasn’t quite entered the vernacular, but the point is the same. He was an only child and moved around a lot and pretty early on had to decide to be his own best friend and to really like himself. And it shows and not in a “hey look at me and how great I am!” sort of way, but with a quiet internal happiness—or more exactly an “okayness” that draws people to him even in a room with smarter, better-looking, more famous, funnier and more accomplished people.
As I thought more about the qualities of coruscation, I realized it ties in very closely with the themes of the anti-bullying talks that I give around the country: accept and respect. If you accept and respect yourself, it offers some protection from bullying. What you say doesn’t matter much because I approve of myself. Compliments are nice, but I can live without them. Insults have even less power because I know deep down that what you’re saying isn’t true.
Children (and adults) who learn to be okay with themselves don’t need to bully or belittle others to feel better about themselves. And of course, the that false feeling of being better than someone else is very short-lived: you still have to go home and be alone with yourself. And if you don’t like the person you are, it makes it tough to share a life with him. And if you accept and respect others—even those who are different from you—you don’t feel the need to put them down.
I have been asked to introduce and lead post-viewing discussions of a popular documentary about bullying, but after doing this a few times, I now decline. I don’t like that particular movie for a number of reasons. One of the primary difficulties I have with the film is that it’s clear from these kids’ home lives that they were set up for failure in life. They were belittled and insulted by their own parents. The victim role follows them to school and will likely follow them the rest of their lives if the pattern isn’t broken. The irony in this movie is that the parents are all blaming the schools for not doing more—which of course they should—but being blind to the reality that the parents are the ones who helped paint targets on their children’s backs.
Parents can do a lot to make their children more resistant to bullying by instilling in them the confidence and self-respect to instead of being embarrassed that they play the violin instead of football, they can be proud their son plays the violin.
Having been bullied in high school, it was very weird for me—the kid who was afraid to say three words in high school—to speak to all 1500 students about bullying at an assembly at my alma mater last year. At the end of my Powerpoint presentation I added a slide of photos of me doing all of the amazing things I’ve done, with some of the many celebrities I’ve met, working on incredible projects. I told the students that I included those photos not to say, “Look at how amazing my life is, but look how amazing your life can be—if you don’t listen to all of the people who say it isn’t.” It took me a long time to learn to sparkle and build a sparking life, but I think it’s within us all to do it.
Many years ago, there was a popular book and hundreds of jokes associated with “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche.” The fact is real men eat whatever they want without fearing who might call them soft or gay or effeminate for their meal choice. Without needing to shout “I like quiche!” or defend their breakfast choice with a chip on their shoulder, but just quietly enjoying their breakfast, they can change others’ views about a lot of things. In other words, real men eat whatever they damn well please. And good men coruscate.
Walter G. Meyer is the author of the award-winning and Amazon Best-selling novel “Rounding Third” based in part on his own experiences being bullied. He is working on the sequel between and during his travels speaking about bullying.
Image by Abby Lanes
