I always loved that old Levi’s ad.

A young blud cruises down off the board walk, free-wheeling, left leg leaning against the top bar of his cruiser. Hey sunshine you wanna ride… She clocks him. Skates on, headphones wrapped. Umm. Nah. He rallies. Ma ride is tha bomb. You can hold onto ma bumpa. Smile cracks across her face. An in. A faint one, but still an in, one he senses. Shake wiggle wiggle. She’s laughing now. She takes hold of the back of his jeans, off they wind into the midday sun..

Any man can get any girl, a mate said the other day.

Big talk.

The girl in the ad, she was unreal, you know what got her. His unflinching self-belief.

*

I’d been fine for 16 months, fantastic even.

Things were bound to go south at some point, and south they went.

Now, two months on, having had a stab at the underwater world record, getting nowhere quite happily like a 4yr old snorkelling in the tub, stacking up take-away boxes, honing YouTube algorithms, refusing to get up until it was as warm out there as it was in here.

Happily was not the word.

My parents got annoyed, I sent a narky email back, ‘that is a fundamentally unsophisticated understanding of depression’. Had read how these moods were the psyche’s way of demanding rest, of having had enough of the status quo. Fine, said my mother, go and see a therapist as well please.

As I waited for my psyche to catch its breath, for this wave to subside, watching Spurs slip down the league, self-medicating by turns, summoning a synthetic joy that left me back to square nought, the idea of belief kept coming back. How big a role does it play in our lives, to believe in our worth, as a springboard for us to take our place in the world.

I’d written something years ago, on love or some such, my father had barraged me. Best writing advice I’d ever received. Enough with your theory! he bellowed. I can read about love wherever I want. In books, magazines, I can watch films, but I want your story. Don’t tell me about love, tell me your experience of love.

I was all set to write about belief.

About Napoleon, and Alexander the Great and Elon, about the rise of Nazi Germany. But in accordance with my father’s tough love, here goes. The story of my own meandering self-worth.

In truth I’ve never had much. Never believed any hype, if there was any to be believed. In the end, my self-belief was like my reflection. If I wasn’t staring it down, zeroing in on its faults, it vanished into thin air.

If the sun and moon should doubt,
They’d immediately go out.

William Blake

*

So the Levi’s ad had inspired this hulaballoo. The kid on the bmx. His playful self-belief. What she responded to wasn’t his ride or his threads, she responded to him backing himself. Women can sniff a molecule of self-doubt. You could be a 4ft tall Andre the Giant and get the girl.

I was no Don Juan but I didn’t have a complex. I’d written a story once about The New Cross Blonde, a bargirl at a pub in Deptford. It had started off great, I’d gone back for her number the following week, she’d encouraged it, but with none of the self-belief I’d shown first time round. She’d asked me to leave the pub. Without the braggadocio of that first encounter, I was just a creepy guy at a bar. Same person, different set of beliefs.

Haunted me still.

It wasn’t belief with girls so much I lacked, it was belief in the being of Domingo.

Walking down the road with a friend many years back, I said ‘I need to be told every single day I’m worthy, that I’m good enough. Otherwise I just won’t believe it’. She looked at me with a slightly pained expression, mingo you might need to work on that.

I don’t know why I’d set to write this up, something in my gut that needed listening to, a lesson needed learning. I have never stood with my back to the bar, looking out across a room, and contentedly exhaled self-belief. An imposter type thing, as if it might be un-PC to believe in oneself. Just not cricket. Something Nicky Haslam might put on a tea towel.

When I tried, I’d more or less succeeded. All the five times in my life. If you don’t shoot you can’t miss. It read like a shopping list. I dropped out of university in 4th year. Later got top marks at a pretty good art school, but couldn’t hand in my coursework on time. How did you get published by the Guardian, a friend asked. They got in touch with me. He rolled his eyes, that just doesn’t happen mate.

I remember writing a cool account of walking in the Highlands once. My girlfriend came downstairs, looking none too happy. What’s up, you not like it, I asked. It was fine, and then she said almost imploringly, you could do so much more. What was it in me so intent on stalling, this shoddy clutch-control, this failure to launch.

A friend told me once how he didn’t believe it when people said they loved him. He heard words, but could attach no feeling to them. It was the same with me and praise. I just didn’t buy it. Was that the reason I stayed up long into the night, rereading my writing, trying to find somewhere, some elusive sign of worth.

Yea mingo you might need to work on that.

Sat there watching de Botton being interviewed, he starts expounding on why some children might need to fail. Hold on… says the interviewer, why would a kid want to fail. Families are complicated places, says de Botton with a wry smile. What if the parent is envious of the child.

My therapist told me once the question you need to ask your father is why this constant need to judge, why this need to bring people down, to raise up his own self-worth. I remember lunching on Lambs Conduit St and I came out with it. He looked sadly into the middle distance, almost glassy-eyed, and said ‘my father never wanted me to be better than him’.

*

I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self-respect.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Duke of Wellington said Napoleon’s presence on the battlefield was the equivalent of 40,000 men. There was that famous Goethe line, Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. I thought about it often. What was my dream, where did I begin.

Jung said the point of our lives, is to live up to our potential. That was merciful. Not up against anyone but ourselves, the battlefield inside our own souls. To get the best of what had been granted us.

The same girlfriend who didn’t love my hiking story wrote me a letter once, I had a part of it pinned on my wall. It was encouragement to get out of neutral, to kick on. Your potential Domingo, your spirit, terrifies me, and I think it might terrify you too. But I’m not going to be an onlooker to this side of you that is reluctant to indulge his own heart’s desires.

I suppose wanting to write this came out of a period, too long a period, a lifetime, of lack of belief, lack of belief in myself, and it was beginning to erode the walls of my water tank. If I didn’t grab my crotch like MJ and make that change, perhaps the tracks on the old train-line might clink into position and fuse, and lead me down a deserted line there might be no coming back from.

Life begins at 40, Jung had written. I was half way through 41, and still acting like an imp. No wonder I was the resident Peter Pan. I needed to stack some chips. Perhaps this was what my psyche needed a break from, all this running. And these past two months of staring into the middle distance was a way of taking stock.

I did wonder if this was the great storm before the calm, before the first day of the rest of my life.

You have seen your own strength.
You have seen your own beauty.
You have seen your golden wings.
Why do you worry.

Rumi

There’s something gangsta about the man who backs himself. Not arrogant, nor deluded, but ugg ugg me protect you from sabertooth. I loved the Ben Harper song. Nothing is as beautiful as when she believes in me. Hit me in the gut. Belief in another, belief in you. The eyes I’d seen locked across a crowded pub, her staring up at him, him looking back, jaded, at the end of a long weekend, locking-in. We’ve got this. I have you.

I believe in you.

So what to do.

Approach more girls in south London pubs, buy a suit and hit the stock market, become the captain of my ship. Write this out. Get the ball rolling n dat. My father’s mind was drawn to myths. I might have to die for you to live, you might even have to kill me, he’d laugh.

It would piss Alfie off no end. He doesn’t have to fucking die mate, that is so ridiculous. You don’t need to wait as much as you think. There is no perfect fucking time. Just get it started, keep it moving.

Don’t underestimate you can do that symbolically, kill your father, said a mate. That was a bombshell. Better start sharpening my metaphysical blade, I thought.

What the hell is the point of our lives.

What is success.

To be vaunted in the eyes of others?

I have the same 24 hours as Elon, still it takes me 12 minutes to leave the house for the corner shop. This belief stuff, it’s not my father’s fault, we all have a nature, well it kind of is a bit, he didn’t take his job seriously enough, I’m sure the whole thing was unconscious, who knows how hard it is to be a parent. I mean he also filled mine and my brother’s mind with riches, I wouldn’t change that for anything. You have to remember, de Botton continued, your parents only need to have done a good enough job.

So what to do.

Diagnose the problem. Overshare it. Get it out of your dome. That was a start. Whatever you do or dream you can, begin it. Live up to your flaming potential.

Sat there chatting gas with Luke, I told him the Goethe quote. He frowned, looked at me like I needed a lobotomy, was I due a roundhouse I wondered. Tell me you’ve read the whole thing. That’s the quote, I protested. Are you fucking kidding me.

Find it immediately, he burned with intensity.

Until one is committed, there is always hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This was different gravy.

This meant something else entirely. If you found that self-belief, if you harnessed it, the Universe would conspire, as Providence, with its swirling magic to wrap you in its clutches and move with you. This was the leap of faith, the dance with the spirit of the unformed future, the Divine plan.

This was Gatsby shit.

So what to do.

I remember the same friend who’d told me all those years before to work on my worth wrote a poem out once on the back of a photo of a man diving into a sea, gave it to me.

One day you finally knew what you had to do.

*

So I had one of those days yesterday, one when the life blood poured through me once again, broke over the walls of the dam and rushed headlong down the hillside into the valley. I cackled in the street, smiled like a loony at everyone, let three repeat three people go in front of me in the queue for the teller. You are never stronger than when on the other side of despair.

On the way up the stairs, I saw a pine needle on a step, I picked it up and put it on the table, closest I got to a Christmas tree all December.

So what to do Domingo.

To begin to believe, it seems.

What did that entail. Actions speak louder than blogposts. But who else was going to do it. I was the captain of my ship, the master of my fate, I had a pink beanie, a bumbag, and some words I couldn’t now unthink or unwrite or unfeel. The proof is in the parfait.

I know what my mother would say, I’ll believe it when I see it darling.

Okay then, mums.

You’re on.