Don’t be too embarrassed to be embarrassed.
Life can be filled with embarrassment and humiliation. Trust me, I know first hand. There were several times in my life when I wanted to crawl under a rock and hide from certain situations. Come to think of it; there were times when I did hide. One time, in particular, was when I was in high school. I don’t think that I will ever forget this day. This one will go down in my personal history book.
In high school, I was in the marching band. We were coming back from a competition, and it was pretty late. When we arrived at the school, all of us began to file out of the buses. It was customary for the band to start unloading the trailer so that we could put things back into the band room before we went home. As I was walking, I tripped and fell over some equipment. I fell hard! I mean really hard! Everyone around me laughed. Now, a normal person would have gotten up, tucked their tail between their legs, and kept going. No, not me though. What did I decide to do? Lie there. I laid there until the laughter died. I lay there until my mom ran up to me and began shaking me. I even had the nerve to lie there, stiff as a board until the ambulance came, picked me up, and took my crazy self to the emergency room. What’s funny is; that I think my mother knew that I was faking it the whole time. I had to carry on with the lie though. I had come too far to turn back. If I would have gotten up after all of that, it would have really been a situation, because my mom would have snapped.
When we reached the hospital, and they unloaded me, I decided to “come to”. My mother was highly upset with me, but she couldn’t prove that I didn’t knock myself out. I think the hospital staff knew I was faking too. They never said for sure if I was or not, but years later I ended up working in that very emergency room and they would discuss patients coming in with false ailments. When I look back on that night, I know I probably should have gotten up, but I let the fear of being embarrassed consume me so much, that I was willing to upset my mother, scare the people around me, and accumulate an unnecessary bill for my family, just so I could keep from being humiliated in front of my peers.
What’s the moral of this story you ask? The moral of the story is; never be afraid to mess up. I was consumed by my embarrassment. It takes a big person who is secure with themselves, to get up and walk in their mistakes. If I had been secure, I would have hopped up, brushed myself off, and kept it moving. Instead, I chose to hide. My hiding involved other players who didn’t ask to play the game.
Expect mishaps to happen. You may not be prepared for them all, but be secure enough, so that when they arrive, you will be ready to brush yourself off, hold your head up high, and walk in it. Being embarrassed is inevitable. There is no way we will be able to avoid it our entire life. What we can avoid, however, is being miserable in our mistakes.
