Truth is a casualty ripped apart from what was self evident. Bob Dylan once said, "All the truths in the world add up to one big lie."  This statement reminds me of a time I discovered a friend of mine didn't like ice cream. I was like WHAT! Who doesn't like ice cream. My friend was slightly ashamed as if he had just lied to me about something. He actually looked away from me and stared at the ground. I realized in that moment, after I was done calling him a mutant and questioned whether or not we could be friends anymore, that he had shared a profound truth with me. I began to realize that it was the truths we don't share that are the source of lies.
Now I don't recommend going out into the world and bearing your soul and confessing everything to anyone. That's fucking crazy. Fetishes can be weird and I don't want to know everything about anyone, except maybe me. I wish to be honest with myself without being ashamed. I suppose that is where the truth lays.
Shame comes from judgement. It can be a good thing, a sign of conscience. I did something I know was wrong and I shouldn't have done it. Now I feel bad. Shame is a personal thing. Shame needs to be reconciled. Now back to my ice cream hating friend.
I wasn't quite done busting his balls so, I began telling him he shouldn't be around children with his cold, cold heart. In fact I told him the reason he doesn't like ice cream is that he's unable to swallow it because it doesn't melt past his cold, cold heart. After a few more laughs and back and forth insults I asked him what he doesn't like about ice cream. He began to tell me a story.
One Summer when he was 8 he and his Dad, pregnant Mom, and two younger sisters went to Dairy Queen and each got a soft serve vanilla cone and as they drove home in the hot station wagon his youngest sister, who often got car sick threw up onto his lap. This started a chain of events, because she apparently ate red licorice earlier that day. My friend look down at the red vomit upon his thighs and thought it was blood and immediately got sick himself and also threw up. His middle sister began screaming and as all this was unfolding in the back seat Mom began to go into labor in the front seat. I can imagine at this point in the story you are having the same reaction as I did. Are you mouth breathing and thinking 'no fucking way'? Well that's how I reacted. My friend continued his story. Meanwhile his father as cool as a cucumber routes the station wagon to the hospital. He drives without saying a word as my friend and his sisters are all crying in the backseat while sitting in vomit. He pulls calmly up to the ER doors and escorts his wife into the hospital. There's a moment before his Dad comes out. Then he slowly walks toward the car and opens the back door where my friend is sitting and quietly says, "This is what happens when you get ice cream."
There's is more to this story which includes some funny shit about his Dad which I will share for another day, but for right now I have a point to make. First of all my friend well into his adult life believed what his father said. That and the nauseous feeling he gets when he's around ice cream is the reason he doesn't eat ice cream. My friend said it was more a feeling of shame that came from that experience. His Dad in that moment vented all his frustrations in the only way he knew and put the weight of the world on him, like none of this would have happened if we didn't get ice cream.
It's amazing how honest an 8 year old brain is. Adults sure know how to fuck it up with a few words. Anyway, shame in this form can be a prison. And this is a benign example of the types of shame that have been hurled upon some of us. I know there is some real ugly stuff that some of you have endured, some real insults to your dignity. We all know the stories of violations of dignity that include lying, rape, even murder...that last one reminds me of a quote from the movie Unforgiven: "...you take away everything he's got and everything he's ever gonna have."
I would say that when we lie to a child we murder their innocence. It's gone forever. And as adults we also experience a little innocence lost when lied to and that is a shame. It is also true.
Innocence is what is self evident. It is what you know in your heart to be true. We are born more or less as innocent beings to participate in a world that has been torn apart by fear. Fear is innate, it helps us survive when the tiger walks into the room. That's the natural form of fear, but the unnatural fear , the fear to express ourselves, the fear we're not good enough or we can't trust what we feel is the catalyst to shame.
We have a real skill at building prisons for ourselves, both metaphorically and literally., but metaphorically speaking the most effective way I know of tearing down these walls of shame is forgiveness. First... and most important is to forgive yourself, especially for the shame that was never yours to begin with. It was dropped off at your door step like a thirsty, hungry, ugly three legged dog unable to fend for itself or breathe that has no hope of surviving. Yet you have been holding onto that dog for years on life support as it looks into your eyes begging for you to let it go. Let that poor fucker go. After you let that poor miserable dog die you may feel pretty damn sad, so let that out too. It's okay to cry...Really. I don't know what secrets you have, just don't tell everyone it's a beautiful puppy when we can all see it's a dying three legged dog.
My 8 year old friend knew in his heart that what his father said was not true, but he also trusted his Father and that's where the conflict began. I want to be careful not to throw this poor Dad under the bus. He is only human after all and if it was me in the same situation I would have been yelling at everyone to shut the F#$K UP, or I may have started laughing maniacally which would have made an already precarious situation crumble into anarchy. The way he remained calm really made him the hero of the story. I asked if his sisters still eat ice cream. He said yes, he is the only one in his family that doesn't like ice cream. Then I asked if his Father has ever talked about that day and my friend said his Mom likes to tell the story and remembers it fondly. My friend reminded me that she wasn't in the back seat and was about to give birth to a beautiful baby girl, so perspective is everything. Then I asked again, "What about your Father?" He reluctantly replied, "He's dead..."
I could tell you all now that none of story about my friend is true and that my friend doesn't exist and yet we all know what is self evident. Hope you enjoyed!