part 32

Shame is worse than death.

Shame is what shuts me up. It clamps onto my heart like cold, cheap, grainy metal and adds just enough weight to produce a sensation of being pulled – not pulled really hard, but just the right amount of pull that leads to a deep, throbbing pain that is always worse than a quick, stabbing pain.

Where does my shame come from? What is it that I have done that has resulted in the shame I have amassed? Right off the bat, shame makes me think that I have done something to hurt someone, which in turn makes me feel really shameful.

The ability to feel pain as a result of inflicting pain upon others – it is supposed to be some sort of virtue, but what does it really mean? How is someone else’s pain determined and measured? How is it tied back to me and something I have done directly or indirectly? Why is the existence of shame in someone looked upon just as negatively as the absence of shame?

Where the hell did all of this shame come from? Why is it so important to me? Why do my attempts at ridding myself of it just heap more on top of the big steaming pile of shame that is already there?

Why am I so preoccupied with shame?

INSERT BIG RED FLAG: when I start to think of something that makes me feel bad, and I begin to barrage myself with overly-philosophical and obnoxiously unanswerable questions concerning this source of feeling bad, that means that I am fucking with my head.

All of the question marks at the ends of the sentences are an obvious tip-off that whatever it is rolling around in my head is not a productive or healthy thing for me to be rolling around in my head. It is really easy to see the red-flags of self-inflicted-mind-fucking since I have learned what they are and try to look out for them. It is not complicated – just scroll up a little and look at all of the question marks I have typed onto this page.

Right there – red flag. Red means stop. Red means danger. See what I mean? It is not complicated.

There was this breakthrough concept that sprouted from a book published when I was a kid. The book was called, “Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Copies of the book began to appear on coffee tables, and in the special selections of reading material thoughtfully placed in magazine racks that are both conveniently and subtly positioned near the toilets in private homes.

Posters with rainbow-colored, childlike fonts listing the only things I need to know and that I learned in kindergarten started sprouting up all over the place. Teacher’s classrooms, the waiting rooms in doctor’s offices, hanging on filing cabinets at the DMV (I actually don’t really remember the DMV having those posters, but I needed a third thing and that sounded good): this adorable new-fangled epiphany about the beauty and simplicity of life.

Even as a kid, it really irritated the shit out of me. I mean, come on – if everything I really needed to know I learned in kindergarten, then why the hell did I have to go to first grade? It was a ridiculous concept.  

For me, the beauty in the simplicity of life was definitely not something I learned in kindergarten. In kindergarten, I learned my home phone number and address, and how to shrink up into myself so that I could feel brave enough to go to school, and how to tie my shoes, and how to spread peanut butter without tearing up the bread. Kindergarten was a lot of things, but it definitely was not a delightful time of discovering the beatific simplicity that is life.

It was really the beginning of an era in which I learned just how complicated life was, and how finding the beauty in anything was not relevant to survival. It was where I learned how to start out diary entries (and later blog posts) with phrases like, “Shame is worse than death.”

Give me a fucking break.  I sound like the miserable, morose teenager I used to be. Don’t get me wrong – just the thought of that whole “everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten” thing still irritates the shit out of me, but not for longer than a second or two.

Giving my time and energy to something as stupid as “everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten” for more than a second or two is what makes life complicated, and depressing, and boring.

So enough of that!

Jonny and I went to a Christmas party last night. It was a “college party” (meaning there were a lot of college students there) and we brought Jonah with us because we couldn’t get a sitter. I was kind of concerned about how the noise and rowdiness would affect Jonah, because he is kind of sensitive to that type of stuff.

The plan was to get there early, and then leave before the alcohol and loud music and dancing and other such rambunction (I made a new word!) took off at full force. It was only the seventh or eighth time we were going to this particular friend’s house, so it ended up taking us almost two hours to find it.

The plus side was that we got to drive around Atlanta at night looking at all of the pretty lights and decorations and stuff. The minus side was that we missed the calm part of the party.

I am usually a little anxious around big groups of people, especially when there is a lot of noise and movement and things, but I felt okay going to this party because I knew we could leave any time we wanted, and I hadn’t seen my friends from school in a long time. Jonny and I look out for each other in situations like that, too, so it was easier to just try to have fun.

I really didn’t know what to expect from Jonah – he is eight, and adorable, and gets extremely agitated when strangers look at him.

I needn’t have worried so. Jonah was a BIG hit. Right away, he began collecting an entourage of beautiful and holiday-festive twenty-something year old girls. They put sticky Christmas bows on his shirt and asked him what he wanted from Santa. He basked in the attention, and even though he started out not wanting me out of his sight, he eventually asked to be allowed to go roam around on his own.

It was awesome. We capped out at about an hour, and when Jonny and I went in search for Jonah to get ready to leave, we found him standing in the middle of the kitchen literally surrounded by a serious and captive audience while he flexed his guns for them. When we walked up to him, he started smiling mischievously and telling everyone out the side of his mouth how Jonny (his dad) loves unicorns.

Again, it was awesome. And Wes, Jonah’s 15 year old brother, is so jealous that he didn’t get to go to the college party.

And now I am not thinking anything at all about shame!

How about that for beatific simplicity?