The Riddler Speaks - Casefile #0092

TRS - Casefile #0092

EDWARD: Anonymous asks: Edward, where do you get all of your confidence from? Do you have any advice for a person with low self-esteem?

(scoffs) Edward Nygma: Therapist! This makes an interesting change from Edward Nygma: Legally Considered Unfit to Stand Trial. Confidence, anonymous, is unique to everyone. I personally have been analysed by six different schools of psychiatry, and all of them seem to have come to different conclusions regarding the source of my personal self-assurance. Egotism is usually cited, but does it have a chemical source, or is it a case of 'if you can do it, it's not bragging'? Difficult to tell, all the psychiatrists ever really got was a healthy consulting fee; answers, unfortunately, are a lot harder to get out of someone like yours truly. It's also difficult to give you advice, anonymous, since I don't know the source of your low self-esteem. But since you're asking a confessed criminal on the internet, I'm guessing personal success or lack thereof is a factor? Not able to get that date? Failing a college class? Worried about your looks? Not sure who you are or what you're going to do with your life? The world is a big, scary, and confusing place and you're not sure if you're up to the task? 

What's your self-worth, you ask yourself, what do you bring to the table? Can you actually make an impact on the world, or you just another speck of humanity that lives sixty or seventy years and dies in a blaze of nothing? A famous man, an Anglican priest but let's not hold that against him - once said long ago that "living well is the best revenge". That, anonymous, is the heart and soul of self-confidence. You're alive, and that alone is better than the bleakness of non-existence. A living being has the potential for anything. Once you're dead, you're just inert tissue - and your potential is limited to fertilising a garden or two. But alive? Living beings here on Earth with nothing but a pair of thumbs and three pounds of grey matter between their ears have split the atom, and tamed the forces of nature. As a living being, you have potential. Either for creation or chaos, depending on how bored you get. The little things don't matter. There's always going to be idiots wanting to destroy genius. Ignore them, and live well. Everything else is just details.