sorry, I'm sorry, you're sorry

Stepping out of shame is very, very, tough in this day and age. We live in a world that perpetually reminds us of something we need to apologise for or feel sorry about.

As a half-British lady who spent her youth growing up in the UK before emigrating 6 years ago, certain conditionings have been engrained in to my subconscious. British-isms such as lots of apologising along with talking a lot about the weather, and thankfully, a sense of humour.

Shame is quite a dark emotion. Self-pity feels like a prison. It's like being a victim of circumstance and brings other people in to the prison to share in the sadness to release the pressure and loneliness.

The difference between self-pity and being stuck in a rut is whether you have the power to change the situation. If you don't like where you are; you have the power to change it.

Self pity can take you to a place where you were a victim (like a glass cage of emotion here). It has taken me a while to find the shame which was buried in a place when I was 8 years old during my parents divorce while I was getting bullied at a new school. Blur's The Great Escape along with my black and white cat, Mollie, were my saving graces at the time. I was just a child and hence, bless my socks, had little power to do anything.

As an adult, one does have a choice. We have the power to say "No I don't want that" and to do something to change what's in the space causing us to suffer. This extends beyond personal power but, I believe, collectively too. It is incredibly scary doing so. It means taking a stand. Facing the music. Perhaps compromising a personality that is 'always nice'. It doesn't feel nice stepping out of self-pity but its great once you do.

At some point the shame picks at you, frustrates you or in my case (before traveling) starts to make you numb and withdrawn. That is when one might ask, without sounding so dramatic; "Do I want change or do I want to die?" That's when you can find your feet and walk. 

Act with power. Walk with purpose. Be authentic.

If one chooses to remain in self-pity others can help, but they're not your feet that you stand up with.

That's when you bring back your power and do something. It may require you to get angry at the past, honour it and act, or cry about the past, honour it and act. Unfortunately the tears and anger of a victim repeat over and over. Anger with power changes something (e.g. No means "NO"). Tears with power opens something. Then its finite it will fade away and you can make a fool out of yourself all you want with funky chicken dance moves in public or trying to save the world.

I found myself stepping out and doing the things I thought I could never do. I became real and a little less fearful and averse to new experiences like eating bananas and mushrooms. Personally this was the hardest emotional part of my lovely little journey thus far and I do believe it was the power behind a lot of the volunteer campaigns I worked on where I was motivated to "Be the change you want to see in the world" because I found the power to act. To just plant a seed, water it and see if it grows.

Eventually I had to ask myself "Am I really alone?" and my answer was "Yes girlfriend.", I'm alone with lots of other awesome people who are also alone, united ironically by our collective aloneness and appreciation of how that feels. A much lighter feeling than feeling sorry for my very existence because of a story from the past or a story that's conditioned in to me by my thank-you-please-sorry-sir upbringing. I hope I am not going to deep here... because some people are sorry about being sorry for being sorry and it is a word that carries a lot of weight despite it being so often used in the British customs.

Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrong-doing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean. - Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

So amongst my random ponderings, I suppose what I am saying is, I hope we get beyond shame, move beyond it so can can focus on the things we truly care about by standing on our own two feet. While I was in Australia the government created a National Sorry Day for the gross mistreatment caused to the Aboriginals in the past. This is just one example of the many human devastations that have happened in the past (by the Brits too no less) and continue happening now in the present day. But sorry doesn't change anything unless there is action and the slate is wiped clean, one moves on and we learn to start again.

Otherwise, will we continue life long wars while technology advances and we face the shaky grounds of economical instability? Will we end up bombing one another arguing over who started it until we experience Hiroshima again?

Which is a really, really sad place.

That's the only museum I've been moved to tears by. A harrowing example of the insanity in this world.

Our culture doesn't really offer a healthy container to deal with the sense of loss and sorrow but hopefully through a more united consciousness we can heal and breathe through the dark stuff and smash some glass cages of emotions feeling a sense of freedom and aliveness with our power to do something awesome and perhaps even a little remarkable in our lives.