Have you ever done something stupid or embarrassing? Something that made you blush or left you feeling totally mortified? And did you lay in bed that night playing it back in your mind over and over, feeling that embarrassment all over again? Yeah, me too.
I was in second grade at a small school, if I had stayed at that school my graduating class would have been about 42 students. And the teacher had asked for me to help pass out the Christmas presents she had bought for each of us. Now, as I was passing them out, she asked us to wait until she said to start opening them. There was an element of surprise to the gift. However, whether I didn’t hear her or I misunderstood, as soon I passed out the last gift, I sat down and excitedly tore the paper off of my own, revealing a rather thick book. She had bought each of us a book. And now I had ruined the surprise.
At night, when I would shut my eyes and try to sleep, that scene would play over and over. For years. And for years I felt that same mortification, all the way to the deepest parts of my soul. Ten, fifteen years later and it still haunted me.
And then one day, my best friend since 8th grade was telling a story about high school. It started with “Remember that time when…”, but I didn’t remember. She was telling this story of something horribly embarrassing for her. Something that I had apparently witnessed, she remembered me being there. And yet, there wasn’t even the flicker of a memory.
A part of being human is this unconscious belief that we are the center of the universe. Everything that happens to us is universal and momentous. It’s a thought system that we have to work hard to overcome, even as we don’t really acknowledge that it exists. We run into it headlong when we realize that our childhood wasn’t the same as others, though we both grew up watching Spongebob on Nickelodeon. Or when we encounter someone for the first time that doesn’t like Good Charlotte as much as we do. And, usually, by the time we’ve fully formed as adults we’ve overcome most of this.
However, we seem to hold on to these moments of embarrassment. And we expect that because the moment was so horrible and memorable for us, the people who witnessed the event still think about it as well. They are still laughing at us or wincing with us even years later. But the truth is that the moment wasn’t memorable to them. It was fleeting and temporal. They were far too caught up in their own heads, their own struggles, to take much notice of your embarrassment.
Why am I talking about this? Because it honestly freed me. I no longer lay in bed at night thinking about that Christmas in second grade. Or the time I fell down the steps on my way to class in college. Or when I drunkenly flirted with a classmate in Spain. Those past mortifications are now memories I can look at it without reliving them. Because I’m likely the only one who remembers them, so there’s no reason to be embarrassed about them. Just like an old scar no longer has the same pain as the original wound, an old memory shouldn’t make you feel embarrassed.
So, let those feelings go. Free yourself from the weight of past embarrassment. Because, I promise you, by and large, you are the only one who thinks about those moments, the only one who puts any weight on them. You are probably going to do stupid things in the future. And there is no reason to carry that around with you.
