A speaker recovering from addiction noticed his own false modesty, then saw the same pattern in Canada itself. The country invented insulin, the telephone, and basketball, yet downplays these achievements. He argues Canadians should take honest pride in what they've built, not confuse self-deprecation with humility.
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About 17 or 18 years ago, I spent a few months in residential treatment for an addiction to alcohol. An addiction that almost killed me. As part of that treatment, every day we had to fill in these forms. DMIs, we called them. Daily Moral Inventories. Basically, you try to remember times in the last 24 hours when you exhibited a bunch of traits like selflessness or patience, or indifference, lying. The hardest one for me to wrap my head around was always false modesty. This is where you pretend to be humble or self-effacing, but you're actually fishing for praise. Like a guy holding a trout in a Tinder profile. That one was hard for me, and for a lot of people. Later, I started to wonder if that was cultural. I mean, have you ever noticed how we talk about this country? We talk about it like it is the opening act to our own concert. We say things like, "Oh, we're not perfect," as if anyone thought we were, or "We're just a small country," even though we are the second largest landmass on Earth. And my favorite, "Nothing really happens here." I mean, the politics of Alberta alone could power 6 seasons of Netflix. It's not that we're modest, it's that somehow, culturally, we have mistaken self-deprecation for identity. After a while, say it long enough, start to believe it. We're known for being polite and quiet and humble. But somewhere along the line, those values got twisted. Polite became passive. Humble became apologetic. We talk about our artists like, "Well, they're good for a Canadian." And when something extraordinary does happen here, we act surprised, like we were incapable of it. The problem isn't that Canada lacks substance. It's that we have spent so long pretending that it doesn't that we have started to buy our own false modesty. And just like in treatment, the first step is admitting it. So here it is: Canada is fucking great. Not perfect. Not finished. But great. This is the country that gave the world insulin. The telephone. Basketball. We've led peacekeeping missions. Welcomed waves of refugees. We've brokered impossible compromises. We've raised poets and astronauts. Invented whole genres of comedy. And our passport still still open almost every door in every country on Earth. What would it look like if we actually took our own country seriously? We've been taught that boasting is rude. What if that's not true? What if taking pride in this place is not arrogance, but a responsibility to the next generation? Sometimes I think the Americans, with all their chest-thumping and eagles flying over tailgate parties or whatever Americans do, maybe they had it right all along. And it's probably not just what we need. Maybe it's what this noisy world needs right now too. A country that can lead without shouting. On my 38th day of treatment, one of the other patients came up to me. Big guy, big guy. Muscles like could power a tank. And he said, "You know, I figured you out. You think you're less than. You're not. You're just scared to be more than." I remember that day because it was a turning point for me. Now I look at Canada and wonder if maybe we need someone to say the same thing to us. We're not less than. Sometimes we are scared to be more than. We don't need to be arrogant, just honest. Because becoming who you're meant to be starts with one hard thing: admitting you already matter. By the way, every Saturday I curate a collection of thoughts on Canadian identity. If you stuck with me this long through the video, I think you'll like it.
