It is not the gods who judge but the herd. The crowd. The masses. The group. The community. When an individual enters a community, it often uses shame to control the individual, and at all costs prevent her from standing out, speaking up or freely expressing herself. Shame is a powerful weapon, characteristic to all layers of society, spanning its vast traumatic implications throughout the strangely fascinating history of humanity.
Shame tends
to determine the direction of our lives. For as long as we can hide behind a
successful career, a house, kids and status, it doesn’t really matter how we
feel. We wear our masks (figuratively and, as of 2020 literally!), sometimes thousands
of them, with commitment and pride till we forget our own faces. Till we can’t
remember what it feels like to be us.
“We live our roles better than our own lives.”― Raoul Vaneigem
It feels
safe to hide in the stories of others. It is easier to be empathetic to their
convictions and suffering than to admit we are like them. Nobody must know that
we are hurt, lonely, misunderstood, confused or lost. It is easier to quietly
bear the burden of being someone else for fear of being judged and avoided as
problematic, dramatic, different, and especially too vulnerable.
We are
taught society favors people who have mastered stability and consistency. Those
whose lives are in order, who always know what to do until they don’t. Then
society moves to the next myth and the next role model available: a celebrity,
an entrepreneur or a political leader, and the wicked game starts all over again...
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This post is part of a series of short musings on topics inspired by the past 14 years of living as an expat in the Netherlands. Some of the posts may be revised or expanded into full essays. As always, thank you for taking the time to read my work. It is my hope that it keeps adding valuable insights to your life. If it does, feel free to subscribe for new content and share it with others.
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You might also like: How do you tell fact from fiction?, On Belonging and Critical Thinking, Unleash Your Creativity, Learners vs Learned, Being or Doing
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