The Uncomfortable Light of Day
"Lean in here", she said. So I did. I leaned across the counter toward where the lady was standing. Her five-second stare, along with a long, low audible sigh, told me something wasn't as it should be. She shook her head. "Lean in here", now pointing to the eye test machine sitting on the counter.
Despite my eyes burning hot with embarrassment, I managed to press my forehead into the bar on the machine, and read a few lines of letters out loud. The lady scribbled something onto pink paper in a manila folder. "Sit here." So I did. "Look here." I did that, too. She pressed a trigger, producing a click and a flash of stark light. Pulling a sheet out of the camera, she waved it in the air for a few seconds, and then placed it in a device emanating the smell of warm plastic. "Congratulations", she said flatly, without looking at me. "Be careful." She handed me the driver's license.
Sixteen years old on that very day, I now found myself with the laminated ticket to freedom that every adolescent boy in the country longs for. As I climbed into the left-hand seat of my mom's van, I thought about how fortunate it would be if one of my friends were to see me driving home right then. Never mind the fact my mom was in the passenger seat. My mind already swirled with plans of cruising the neighborhood, elbow casually out the window, blasting VanHalen at levels loud enough to hopefully gather admiring looks from jealous 15-year-olds on their bicycles.
Feeling the faint outline of the new card in my pocket, I was, outwardly, nothing but smiles. But inwardly, I couldn't stop thinking about how I'd looked like a blathering idiot as I leaned across the table at the DMV. Even at that age, I had enough objectivity to know that, all things considered, it wasn't a big deal: A kid who was barely shaving, in unfamiliar surroundings, at the most important appointment of his life to date...a boneheaded move was almost a foregone conclusion. The lady at the desk had likely seen a million half-witted teenagers come and go before me, and forgotten about it before I left the building. Yet I could feel it still, the stinging awareness of being shown to be something less than I wanted to be.
Although that was my first memorable experience as to the power held by the internal pain of embarrassment, it wasn't remotely the last. I've seen it manifested - in myself and others - nearly every day since. Whether we admit it or not, it is a quiet and shadowed hand, influencing much of what we do, say, think and feel. It's why public speaking ranks near death on the surveyed list of greatest fears. It's why we second-guess voicing an opinion in a public venue, and second-guess looks and comments from people we barely know. It's why we satisfy ourselves with low-risk electronic "likes" from "friends" on social media, even though they're often people with whom we don't even personally interact.
We've grown to feel it's better to live in a self-imposed cage behind a controlled facade, our unvarnished words unheard and our true gifts unnoticed, than to be thought a fool.
Why is this, exactly? In part, I think, it's because embarrassment is an emotion that encourages what psychologists call a "nested" emotion. Meaning we can actually feel other emotions - such as fear - about the very idea of embarrassment. And this has a compounding effect, where we begin to avoid any situation that could potentially cause us to be viewed in a way other than we hope, not only for the embarrassment itself, but because of the fear we've developed of potentially feeling embarrassed.
There are several different emotions that can be mistaken for one another, and can often be connected in more than one way, but are actually separate and distinct. Per Dr. Neel Burton, writing for Psychology Today, here is the simplified difference between these linked emotions:
Embarrassment: Response to something that threatens our projected image.
Guilt: I did something bad.
Shame: I am bad.
It is this intermingling of related emotions that can blur our understanding of the true effect they have on our everyday actions. If one already experiences shame, for example, then embarrassment is felt more often and more severely. Guilt - and the embarrassment which may arise from it - can lead to shame, over time. And once shame takes hold, it causes the other two to confirm what we already mistakenly believe about ourselves: That whether from something we've done in the past, or from how we were made to feel by people we trusted, we are unworthy to accomplish, or give, or receive anything good, ever.
We spend colossal amounts of time worrying about what others think of us. The irony, of course, being that others are all doing the same thing themselves. The sum of this unwinnable game, is that rarely do we feel free to truly be who we'd like. Even among friends, we often hold back our deepest thoughts, for fear of what would happen if they ever found out who we really are.
But we can never learn what we are capable of - what we were gifted from birth to do - until we can get past the fear of being discovered. Of people laughing at our failures. Of being embarrassed. Until we can see shame for the lie it is. And it's not a one-time thing. It's a battle within the mind that needs to be fought constantly. We won't win every time. But it is a fight desperately worth waging.
Those people who seem to be doing exactly what they were born to do, who seem to be living lives of excited happiness; those who are always looking forward to what is to come - rather than dwelling on what has been - are not more gifted or talented than you. They can't be, because not one of us is instilled with the exact same gifts as another. It's not that they haven't made mistakes, or felt pain, or regretted decisions made long ago. It's that they've found a way to listen to what they know they should be doing, even if it means the certain disapproval of those who, for selfish and cowardly reasons, don't want to see someone else climb out of the hole they've never been able to escape themselves.
Criticism will not stop. You'll experience plenty of it toward anything you feel is worthy. It isn't denial of negativity that allows us to live above it. Instead, it is acknowledgement - accepting it for what it is, and no more - followed by a decision to pursue your gifts anyway. It's the only way to gain the resilience to do it again tomorrow, and the day after that.
And it's the only way to understand the negativity of bystanders isn't fatal. It is in fact a powerless mirage, which vanishes in the face of determination. You'll find, as you imperfectly do things in which you truly believe, you are inspiring people with your uncovered honesty. Because people, at their core, don't want to be surrounded by people without flaws. They want whole truths, and they want to be around others with whom they can be wholly truthful.
One of the most admirable things; the rarest, most courageous things you can do, which can't help but change the way you live your days, and the way those around you live theirs, is to risk being found out.
Because in the end, the risk lies not in what others might discover about you. It lies instead in what dies undiscovered with you, that the world never knew.