Monday, May 3, 2010

WHAT DEFINES US


Chris has "honored" me with an award. This is not me fulfilling it. This is me agonizing over it. You can meet the requirements of the award in numerous ways, but the one I am most likely to go with is *Write about your most embarrassing moment.* Now, my dilemma obviously isn't that I have a problem in sharing my humiliating moments, since I have already dished up several for your reading pleasure scrutiny. I am actually having trouble with the word most.

What quantifies something as most in this sort of thing? Is it the number of people who observe the embarrassing moment, a particular person who observes it, or does anyone have to observe it at all? Is it enough for you to know that you did something so stupid, or worse yet, that you compromised yourself in some way that you cannot take back? In some ways, that extends beyond the bounds of embarrassing and into the territory of shameful. Of course, if other people knew, then it would be embarrassing.

So, what defines us? The secrets that we keep or the ones that we tell? If we let them go, do they cease to have power over us, or by letting them out do they have more weight? I suppose if I were someone famous, it would become the thing that defined me instead of the thing that set me free. Since I'm not, I don't know. I like to think that people are generous and forgiving. I'm not so sure. Right now there is this line from an Indigo Girls song running through my head. I can't even think of the name of the song. But the line is "The things I hate in you are the things I hate in me."

4 comments:

  1. Oh my god, I love the last line, and it's something I live by often. I think most of the time we hate someone for no reason, it's because it strikes a cord about things we hate in ourselves...

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  2. A sound track of your childhood it is...lol.
    I haven't read any really embarrassing moments from you.
    mistakes in trust in relationships aren't embarrassments, they are human.
    I like to think embarrassing moments happen when hubris overwhelms good sense.
    It's up to you, don't think I didn't notice you talked your way around it.
    lol.
    Have a good night.

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  3. Maybe shorten it to the they that embarrassed me the most this week?

    Even if we are famous our most embarrassing moments don't have to define us, our achievements can define us.

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  4. Chris, The most mortifying thing to happen to me I blogged about in JUST GIVE ME A WORD. It was getting my period in the 9th grade in those white pants, and getting the news from John R. via Kris R. That is hands-down the most embarrassing thing ever that has happened to me. On so many levels. However, I already told that story. So, we are not looking at the next most embarassing.

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