Burn, Baby Burn

Task 31, August 2 t0 August 9

Life is a long lesson in humility. J.M. Barrie

I have utterly humiliated myself more times than I can count. These instances are not anyone's fault but my own. I repeat: it is my pride, my ego, my hubris that is always the cause of my self-abasing behavior.

There is a clear pattern as well: 1) using poor judgment; 2) acting on said poor judgment; 3) paying inevitable price for said behavior.

Case in point: I got caught stealing when I was 14. I lifted some record albums from a music store in local mall. Getting caught by the nerdy cashier was bad; getting arrested by the cops was worse; being picked up at the city jail was terrible; but the most humiliating part of this disaster was standing next to my mom in court. I can still see the pain in her eyes.

Some humiliations aren't as gut wrenching--i.e. I lost my balance on the treadmill at the gym, and within a millisecond I was flat on my face, arms and legs akimbo, sliding off the apparatus while bystanders watched agape or snickered. Or recently, when my youngest son and I biked to the park to kick around a soccer ball (which in itself is humiliating because I have no natural ability at soccer), I decided to show off and threw my hands into the air--unfortunately the bike's front tire hit a patch of pine needles and I flew, screaming, then alit dramatically, writhing and moaning. My son, concerned and appalled, helped me off the ground, but he was keenly aware of and embarrassed by the reaction of the other park-goers.

Also:

--I have wrote about this before, in a different context, but it's relevant: I was in NY, I was in my early 60s, I was working on 7th Ave. At lunchtime one afternoon in the dead of winter I left the office to grab a salad at a nearly bodega. I pushed through the wind and light snow and just as I reached the door to the small storefront a woman--I'm guessing that she was AT LEAST 11 months pregnant--stepped in front of me and opened the door, saying "after you sir". I was confounded, humiliated and sad, because it was that day that I realized that other people, not me mind you, but other people saw me as "old". I went inside after her but I left through the back door, no longer hungry.

--When I was a freshman in high school I was asked to altar serve at a triple funeral. The three caskets were lined up in the center aisle of the church. My responsibility was to stand with two other guys behind the casket that was furthest from the altar. Two of us, holding Paschal candles (enormous ceremonial candles), stood on either side of a guy gripping a tall, 6ft. crucifix. The church was silent except for some crying relatives. Long story short, the guy in the middle started laughing--why? To this day I don't know. But he laughed and for some reason I found myself laughing and then the third guy joined in, and by the time we stifled ourselves, the entire bereaved congregation was staring at us like we were deranged, which we were. Even now, some 50 years later, if I run into a person who was there that day, ESPECIALLY if that person was a relative of one of the deceased, they glare at me.

--I was called into a dead serious HR meeting. The agenda: to confront one of my employees who was being accused of sexual harassment. My boss was there--Mary, who liked to wear tailored suites--as was the accused, the head of HR, and a company lawyer. The tension was thick. At a critical point in the proceedings, just as the HR person (who had NO sense of humor) was about the lay the hammer onto the employee, I leaned too far back in my chair and it fell backward, throwing me to the ground. Oh, and my arm, the one that I was going to use to break my fall, was clutching a Diet Coke, which sprayed all over the room, soaking my boss and the HR lady.

Jeez.

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Now, 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 method to deal with humiliation: I put it in a mental strongbox and locked the strongbox in a vault in my pysche. 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.

Recently, though--after the bike incident--I started thinking about some of my other humiliating moments. I decided that it was time to open the strongbox and confront the ugly memories.

TASK:

Write down the details of the most humiliating moments of your life. Dredge up every detail, every emotion, every painful memory. Write them down in your notebook. Revel in them for a moment. Then turn the page.