You, Me and Lessons from Embarrassment in Life!

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It is true that we all share the stories of our success with great courage but it requires greater strength to share the story of our failure, shame, regret and embarrassment with some minute details. So here is one for you, the latest one as of now, although I have many saved in my memory trunk and I will share with you in times to come, but this is for today to draw some lessons from.

And this is how the story begins…

My husband told me to be ready for the Eve’s Party (Ladies Party) and so was I; the day was 18^th April 2015. The dress code was white and so was I dressed up to the nines. The time of the party was 5:00 PM and I and my neighbor reached there at half past five, which was perfect according to the Indian standard time.

Before entering the gates of the venue, we could hear the commotion and feel the energy and vibrations all around. The mere thought of getting an opportunity to interact with so many new ladies was itself so exciting and full of life that I could not hold control of my wandering mind. After all, I have been a social bird all these years, and this was the best place and opportunity to make new friends with so many new people, and that too, at such a formal get together.

We moved faster and reached the venue and with the best of formal smile on our faces, we looked for some familiar smiles in the crowd. Soon I searched and recognized two acquaintances and reached there to exchange my greetings with them. They reciprocated my greetings with the same warm gesture.  The party was all set and I could see all the ladies carrying themselves with panache and oozing out confidence with their friendly talks. They were all engaged in interaction and were showing the best of mannerism mixed with casual formalism.

Suddenly my neighbor called me back and then we were asked by one of the organizing members, “You are from which Department?” before I could make sense and context out of her questions, I replied, “not from any department but we are from Faculty House”. The lady did not handed over the chits to us, which she was handing over to the other invitees and that was the moment which gave us an emotional jolt and some kind of minor fracture to our coherent self.

Within no seconds we analyzed the situation and scrutinized the list of invited guests for the party and before we could know how to handle the situation, we realized it was already out of our control. We observed that party was hosted for all the Female members of the faculty and not for the wives of the male faculty members, since they were already invited a day before to the Adam’s Party. And thus, we two were there as the uninvited guests, sitting there with our blank and pale faces, with help-us-out-of-this-situation voice, shouting inside us but visible on our silent faces.

We both were shocked. We both were embarrassed. We were freezed and could not decide what to do next. My husband with great confidence had told me to attend this party, and this was one of the first occasions since my arrival to this place, which he had highly recommended me to be a part of. This was indeed a great party but unfortunately he could not understand that it was not for his wife. I felt anger boiling inside me and wished I could turn into a stone or a plant or furniture or any other object standing nearby. Emotionless and lifeless at least, I will be for some time. I would not be asked to introduce myself and would not feel fish out of water for sometime there.

Sitting there I felt that all of a sudden I was underwater and was gasping for breath. My supersonic micro expressions were too loud and with the best of my knowledge on the subject of non verbal communication (oculesics, kinesics, optics and haptics) I felt I was unable to exploit my experience to hide my non verbal cues . Although, I also knew that my readers were not clairvoyant and I was the one , who was sharing with them, my fears and non-verbal thoughts. But I was too helpless to perform any fake facial acrobatics at that time. I was embarrassed and I did not know how to react for few minutes.

Okay without boring you up to the death and cutting my long story short, let me share with you that me and my neighbor somehow managed to be part of that party for almost half an hour and after enjoying the snacks we excused ourselves with grace by taking the exit from the main door.

So, after eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge from the Garden of Eden, I learnt few lessons from my moments of Embarrassment,  which I would like to share with you:

•  “Things turn out to be best for those who make the best of the way to turn things out for them,” says John Wooden.  We can keep this thought in our mind for facing such life’s situations. And inspired by the same thought, I thought, why not to use this incident to write this blog post and share its learning with all.
• Practice mind like water. Remember this advice from Bruce Lee. Such experiences in life call for our action and  allow us to practice mind like water. Let’s not over react. Just respond to the situation and accept that we are in a situation which demands us to behave in a certain way.
• Let us not take the things too personally. We at times are nothing but big bolls of ego mash-ups. This ego feels hurt, but we are not defined by this ‘I’ only, we are sometimes, something else also, mere consciousness. That moment cannot define us completely. It is just a context and a moment that we have to face for sometime.
• Let go. This is one of the best moments in life when we can hone and practice and experiment our let go skill. The more we hone this skill, the better we feel. After all, on this earth there are billions of people who have undergone or will undergo such situations and we are just one of them.
• Fly high and try to change perspective. Just imagine that we are in an aeroplane and from there we are trying to find our own home? Difficult task, isn’t this? Of course it is. These situations may also look too small if we try to look them from too far.  Try this out, it works.
• Or we can save such memories for our experience trove and learn from them later on, if they are worth it. The lessons on failure, shame, embarrassment and struggle are the most treasured lessons of our life and if could live and be in those moments than there is nothing greater than that. We all will have something interesting to share with our friends and kids after all.
• Don’t take that situation too seriously. It is better to laugh and share with others what we have gone through and when we share with others we just feel awesome and great.
• We can write such incidents in our diary and journal and read them after a year or six months and see how much we draw strength from them. And if nothing else, they will make us laugh at least.
• We can understand these situations as real life tests which examine our perception, learning, knowledge and personal power to handle such contexts. If we do not qualify the first then we should be prepared and ready for the next.
• And we should be happy that we are growing mature after facing each such situation because, “The rate at which a person matures is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate,” says Douglas Engelbart.

It is true that the magnetism of such embarrassing moments is so strong that it does not allow us to enjoy our present and nor does it allow us to move ahead in our future for a longer duration of time.

Since it has happened with me and I am sure would have happened with you also where you would have found yourself confined in the incarceration of embarrassing moments in your life. But now, we know that we can always do something about them. We can easily come out of such situations in life. Although we cannot avoid them, nor can we predict about them, but with such lessons, we can always try to handle them smartly now onwards . Can’t we?

So, now it’s time for us to prepare ourselves for such situations in life well in advance. And as great people with their effort make a dent of embarrassment as the jewel in the crown of their life, so we can can also convert these embarrassing moments into glorifying moments of our life. And be ready for our next call as JK Rowling says that “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.” Don’t these moments define us how we live our lives after all?