When I was going out every weekend, it was common for me to spend $200 on any given Friday, Saturday, or both.
I hated looking at my bank account that next Monday when checking out the damage and felt shameful when I realized how much of the hard earned money I was spending trying to impress others.
It hurt so much so that I would sometimes not check my account for days after. I was so embarrassed, that I couldn’t even get myself to look at the repercussions of my actions!
But that shame built up so much so that I finally made a change. The more I try to make change in my life, the more I realize shame is a driving force behind real change.
There are countless things in my life that I have felt and still feel shame about every time I do them because I can see the direct repercussions of those actions. When I made the change to care less about impressing others and caring more about how I felt about myself, a wave of shamefulness hit all at once when I thought about how I was hurting so many of the people closest to me – mostly, myself. It hurt. But it was the catalyst to me going sober.
As I look at what’s happening in society now a days, I can’t help but to think that we as humans are becoming more and more abstracted away from the consequences of our actions. Shame is no longer existent.
A few examples…..
We don’t see the landfill of trash that we personally have produced, so it doesn’t seem like pollution is our fault.
We don’t see the animals that we kill firsthand before we eat them, so we don’t consider how it was sourced and the impact that has on the animals.
We don’t see the people that we cancel or fight with over social media, so you can virtually be as aggressive and hateful as you want and not directly see the impact (you used to get punched in the mouth – disclaimer: not advocating for that to come back and be a thing, but I’m sure it was effective).
We haven’t stepped foot into a community where law enforcement is needed or have ever had to call the cops ourselves, but we yell “Defund the Police” from our 3 bedroom crib in the suburbs.*
We can yell and scream about theories and “good ideas” and even get so much support from people online that those changes are made, yet we aren’t in the communities or environments the change happens to see the real outcome and impact. There’s no opportunity to feel shame in our destruction, so we proudly move on with our lives thinking we’re doing the right thing.
We don’t feel the need to drive less, eat organic, stop drinking, lay off social media, and so much more because there isn’t a need to. There’s no embarrassment from thinking about the actual hard we’re doing personally.
I can continue, but the point is how are we to change if we don’t see the actual results of our actions? Directly. Not reading about them. But seeing them and feeling them. Feeling the shame that comes with being wrong or doing something dumb. Looking at the person you want to cancel in the eyes or seeing how your virtue signaling really plays out with the people you’re trying to help.
As we move to a more abstract way of living, remember that your actions have real world implications. Even if you don’t see them firsthand.
*Getting ahead of reactions to that statement, I’m not saying police reform shouldn’t happen in any way. Simply saying that people who claim systems within communities should change without feeling the weight of those changes should be more cautious.
Potential 