Embarrassment Has Good Bones

When I try to think of the last time that I truly embarrassed myself, I want to point to something silly, like a few weeks ago when, while grabbing a coffee in a small, crowded shop, I sat down in a broken chair and experienced the first Honest-to-God, Ass-Over-Teakettle fall that I have had in probably my entire adult life. In a superficial sense that is embarrassing, sure. But that was easy to laugh off. Some strangers kindly offered me napkins and I picked myself up off the floor and went on with my day. Was it humbling? Absolutely, but it was not exactly embarrassing.

True embarrassment requires sincerity, vulnerability. True embarrassment keeps you up at night. Unfortunately, in a ridiculously human dichotomy, the risk of embarrassment goes hand in hand with just about anything that makes life worth living.

All of the best things in life require a degree of embarrassment, or at least the possibility of it. Dancing, singing, sharing art, cooking food, having sex, holding hands; there is risk in it all. You could burn dinner or sing off key; no act of self expression or love is exempt from this danger. Embarrassment is scary because rejection is scary, failing is scary, judgment is scary and we have learned to equate all of these experiences to something bad. Because of this, we all too often find ourselves feigning apathy to avoid embarrassment: what you don’t care about can’t hurt you, right? 

To some degree, that is very true. The only way to live a life without embarrassment is to simply not care about your actions or how others perceive them, to always have your guard up and play your cards close to your chest. A life that sounds, frankly, terrible. Being cool and disinterested and unaffected by the world is a bleak existence, like living near a river that you never swim in. Of course, not all embarrassment feels worth it; some double texts get left on read and sometimes you wave at someone in a crowd who never ends up seeing you, but in many ways these are the only embarrassments that truly matter. These acts of earnestness that remain unrequited show us something sort of beautiful about ourselves. Heat blooms in our cheeks and our stomachs tie themselves in knots because we allowed ourselves to be vulnerable, to be honest, to risk getting a tiny bit hurt in the process.

I am trying to live my life more honestly, which is another way of saying I am preparing to embarrass myself much more. I am going to try to dance more and get in the way a bit more; I am going to send more texts that make me cringe and be more sincere when I talk to my loved ones and strangers alike. I am going to make a whole bunch of art and share it with people. I’m going to be horribly earnest and vulnerable. As a result, I will probably experience more rejection and constantly worry that I have over shared, that I have been too much. And that’s okay. I don’t think life has to constantly be a game of strategy; there is no prize at the end of all of this for whoever cared the least. You have nothing to lose by showing your hand, and everything to gain from being sincere.

Doesn’t it feel so thrilling to try hard and fail anyways, to care so much and get hurt regardless, to reach out and be ignored? Embarrassment is inevitable. Embarrassment is fun. Wearing strange outfits and doing karaoke and falling in love is fun, and none of those things come free. And if embarrassment is what it costs to live a full, earnest, and beautiful life, then so be it.