Don’t wear it on your sleeve

Reader question:

Please explain this sentence – Be ambitious, but don’t wear it on your sleeve.

My comments:

To paraphrase: Be ambitious, but don’t show it (your ambition) all the time.

People sometimes wear a pin on their sleeve to show them off. It might be a pin bearing the logo of, say, your favorite soccer team, demonstrating your support for that particular club.

People may wear such a pin on the chest of their coat, too but that is not an idiom. “Wearing it on the sleeve” is, and it is a variation from the idiom “wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve”, which “may derive from the custom at middle ages jousting matches”, according to Phrase.org. “Knights are said to have worn the colours of the lady they were supporting, in cloths or ribbons tied to their arms.”

William Shakespeare, though, is credited with using the term for the first time, in Othello, 1604. Again, from Phrase.org:

In the play, the treacherous Iago’s plan was to feign openness and vulnerability in order to appear faithful:

Iago:

It is sure as you are Roderigo,

Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago:

In following him, I follow but myself;

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,

But seeming so, for my peculiar end:

For when my outward action doth demonstrate

The native act and figure of my heart

In compliment extern, ’tis not long after

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.

Anyways, if you wear your heart on your sleeve, you show your emotions and let them be known.

Likewise, and coming back to our question, if you wear your ambition on your sleeve, you don’t want to hide it.

Why should you want to hide it, you ask?

Well, for two reasons. One, if you cannot hide your ambition, you may lack self control and self-control is something great to have as a counter balance to being ambitious. The greater ambition one has, the greater self control one may need in order to accomplish that ambition, whatever it is. It sounds counterintuitive, I know.

Second, if you don’t hide your ambition, your opponents might become jealous and they will thwart your plans if they have a chance. This seems straightforward enough, as every man in the office, or, especially, if you have a political career you will be able to testify how important it is to keep your plans to yourself – if you really want to go far.

But the first reason why you should not always wear your ambition on the sleeve is where I want to dwell upon some more. Opponents are opponents. They’re always there. They’re just rivals who more or less want the same thing that you want. When people fail, they always point to sabotage or even backstabbing on the part of one opponent or another. That’s really barking under, or up, the wrong tree. If they want to point a finger, they should point that finger at no one but themselves.

In other words, their worst enemy is themselves. They don’t have the self control to exercise restraint and tack all the time. Or, they wear everything on their sleeve and therefore are always inviting envy and/or jealousy – these two always come in a pair and they are really more of less the same thing.

Alright, media examples of people who wear or don’t wear it on their sleeve:

1. When Michael Yardy flew home from the Cricket World Cup this week suffering from depression, he joined a long list of elite sportsmen who have made the difficult decision to seek help for a mental illness.

England batsman Marcus Trescothick left the Ashes tour to Australia in 2006 with what was described at the time as a “stress-related illness”. Later he wrote a book about his battle against depression.

In an interview with BBC Sport programme Inside Sport in 2009, he recalled how he thought about harming himself to prove he had a problem.

“I considered hurting myself just to show people how much pain I was in,” he said.

“If you’ve got a broken leg you’ve got a cast on your leg, people can see you’ve got a problem but when you’ve got mental problems there is nothing evident to people to show you need help.”

Boxer Frank Bruno, Celtic football manager Neil Lennon and All Blacks rugby union star John Kirwan have also talked openly about their depression.

Admitting there is a problem is something sports people find extremely hard, not least because they are conditioned to be both physically and mentally tough.

Yet Yardy, the Sussex captain, found the strength to say: “I felt that it was the only sensible option for me and I wanted to be honest about the reason behind that decision.”

If one in five people are affected by depression at some point in their lives, then it is not surprising that sports stars are prone to it too.

Ian Maynard, professor of sport psychology at Sheffield Hallam University, says the fact that sportsmen are not naturally emotional does not help.

“They don’t wear their heart on their sleeve because that can cause problems in competition, so they tend to be more buttoned-up and get a mentally tough exterior.”

- Why are sports stars prone to depression? BBC.co.uk, March 26, 2011.

2. Dan Wilson, who co-wrote, produced and played piano on British singing sensation Adele’s No. 1 hit song “Someone Like You,” and is likewise nominated for album of the year for his work on “21,” appeared on the Grammy Awards red carpet Sunday alongside fellow Adele songwriter Fraser T. Smith.

Both men expressed a great deal of admiration for the young singer, saying that working with her was a pleasure because she made it her mission to bring out the best in them.

But it is Adele’s ability to wear her heart on her sleeve and be herself in the face of fame, they said, that has helped her capture and keep the world's attention.

“The woman is a musical genius,” Wilson said. “She’s just a powerhouse of a musical figure and creator. And she can’t help but be herself.”

“She’s got her heart on her sleeve, coupled with integrity and a great sense of humor,” Smith added.

- Grammys: Adele wears her heart on her sleeve, songwriters say, LATimes.com, February 12, 2017.

3. David Cameron has ventured into territory avoided even by Tony Blair, the most devout prime minister in living memory, during his time in Downing Street.

As Easter Sunday approaches, Cameron has decided to “do God” in public, as Alastair Campbell might say.

The prime minister, who held an Easter reception in Downing Street, quoted from the Gospel of Luke as he spoke of “we” Christians.

“This is the time when, as Christians, we remember the life, sacrifice and living legacy of Christ. The New Testament tells us so much about the character of Jesus; a man of incomparable compassion, generosity, grace, humility and love. These are the values that Jesus embraced, and I believe these are values people of any faith, or no faith, can also share in, and admire.

“It is values like these that make our country what it is – a place which is tolerant, generous and caring. A nation which has an established faith, that together is most content when we are defined by what we are for, rather than defined by what we are against. In the book of Luke, we are told that Jesus said, ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you’ – advice that when followed makes for a happier, and better society for everyone.”

He told the assembled guests that he welcomed a Christian “fightback”. He said: “I think there’s something of a fightback going on, and we should welcome that. The values of the Bible, the values of Christianity, are the values that we need.”

Cameron’s public avowal of his faith contrasts with previous jocular remarks – in a Guardian interview in 2008, the future prime minister said: “I am a sort of typical member of the Church of England.

“As Boris Johnson once said, his religious faith is a bit like the reception for Magic FM in the Chilterns: it sort of comes and goes. That sums up a lot of people in the Church of England. We are racked with doubts, but sort of fundamentally believe, but don’t sort of wear it on our sleeves or make too much of it. I think that is sort of where I am.”

- David Cameron ‘does God’ at No 10 Easter event, The Guardian, April 4, 2017.

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.