TASK #28: BURN, BABY BURN
Life is a long lesson in humility. J.M. Barrie
Gentlemen, I have utterly humiliated myself more times than I can count.
I tried to hold back a sneeze in church. I farted instead. Loudly. In a packed church. In a quiet moment.
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Just today–hours ago in fact–my teenage son and I took our bikes to the park to throw the ball around. We do this almost every weekend. Why? I don’t know why. He likes to do it and it’s better than what we used to do, which was to go to the park and kick the soccer ball around, which meant that I played goalkeeper and he hit the ball at me. Which in itself was humiliating because I couldn’t stop anything.
Today, I raced ahead of him, showing off, waving my arms–I WIN! I shouted, then the bike’s front tire hit a patch of pine needles and I went flying into the air and landed on my side. As my son pulled up I was rolling around on the ground, wincing in pain, much to the delight of the families having picnics, the men playing basketball, the millennial’s throwing Frisbee’s, and the Hispanic nannies. The only person who wasn’t laughing was my son, who drove on as though he didn’t know me.
Also:
- This week, at work, we added a new account executive that I would have to report to… who was once my intern. That was a burn.
- In middle school I got caught stealing. Standing next to my mom in court was agony.
- I fell on the treadmill at the gym.
- I tried to hold back a sneeze in church. I farted instead. Loudly. In a packed church. In a quiet moment.
- In college this woman cheated on me with a jock. And posted the deets.
I have a more expedient, and time-honored way to deal with humiliation–I put it in a mental strongbox and lock the strongbox in a vault in my head. In short, I never think nor speak of it again. This is especially effective if no one, especially my friends, witnessed or heard about it.
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Some men, after biting the bitter fruit of humiliation, get depressed, or rage, or forgive, or turn to evil, or retaliate.
I have a more expedient, and time-honored way to deal with humiliation–I put it in a mental strongbox and lock the strongbox in a vault in my head. In short, I never think nor speak of it again. This is especially effective if no one, especially my friends, witnessed or heard about it.
Today, though–after the bike incident, I started thinking about some of my other humiliating moments. And I wrote about them.
TASK
You’re going to re-enact, by yourself, the most humiliating moment of your life. First, pick one. Second, if you can go to the exact spot it happened, great, if not, pick a place like it, or if even that is impossible or just too painful, wait ’til you’re alone at your home.
Act it out. Dredge up every detail, every emotion, every painful memory. When you’re finished write it down in your notebook. Then turn the page.
Photo courtesy of the author