The weekend before last, I wrote a piece called “6:47 am, Corona.”
I opened it with a scene about me walking to the Queens 10K and the runners moving in procession along the boardwalk shortly after exiting the train at Mets-Willet’s Point.
I don’t know how well I painted the picture of the experience of that morning, but from the comments, it seemed like a few people really felt what I was saying. I was painting the feeling I get when I experience “___”
I leave it blank for now because people will add their own connotations of what that word means, and I don’t want to do that.
What I want to say is that with every footstep on that Boardwalk, the mission and purpose of my whole life resounded powerfully in the vibrations. Walking together, the music, my feet, his, hers, theirs. It was a crisp morning of sunshine, but there was nothing about the scenery that made the feeling or knowing occur.
There was nothing “outer” about my experience, and as I reflected upon knowing, and dreams, and movements, and love, I was overcome with joy, beauty, and incredible effervescent understanding. I knew that day I was one with the divine again.
I was proud of the piece, and I blasted it everywhere.
Then, I got a comment that just… made me mad.
It simply said:
“Which caused the shame?:)”
I didn’t understand.
I was writing about being divine light. What was shameful about that? Even the writing about my pre-race ritual in the port-a-potty…. I didn’t have shame about a pre-race poop (or a mid-race poop, for that matter. It’s part of life and especially part of life as a runner.)
What could have possibly, during that amazing, connected, beautiful, incredible, soul-weaving, light-illuminating moment between me and God could have caused something as ugly as shame?
I was put off by the comment because I felt incredibly misunderstood as a writer, and when my messages don’t land, the first thing I want to know is “why?” What could I have written differently or better to have made the beauty and divinity of that morning come through in my words?
How could I have described the dream differently in my writing, being inches from the face of my love, us together, intertwined energetically, knowing we all are one? What could I have written?
It continued to irk me as the trigger for me is “not being understood.”
And then… I went to a gathering last week where I’d say the majority of the room was Baby Boomer/early Gen X. And then… I understood.
More than one person mentioned shame as something they experience when they do something “good.”
…wow.
Whoa…
So, a few things.
First, I’m an Elder Millennial.
American Millennials bear our share of issues, mainly to do with our anxiety, but I mostly blame 9/11 for those and the fact that the economy went to hell right as we were graduating college with insurmountable debt; debt for our education that we were promised would have a significant ROI, and didn’t.
…That’s an aside.
I am of the “participant trophy generation,” the generation where everybody is worthy, maybe even to a detriment.
My mother is in the age group of the majority in the room last week—the people who experience shame when they have “good” things happen. I have noticed that she does not like to talk about her superpowers.
As I get older, I see the fucking brilliance she brings to organizations and the way she systematically does what she does (something I don’t have the skill set to do, by the way, as our brains work in completely different ways.)
I love to boast about her. She’s a genius in her own right. And yet, when I do, this is something she doesn’t care for.
I’ve analyzed this over the years because I love to understand “how things come to be this way.”
She not only does this with accomplishments but also beauty. She’s always been beautiful… I never understood.
My mom and I have something in common in that we both had childhood influence of the Silent Generation. She was completely raised by Silent Generation members, and my brothers and I somewhat were when my mom was young and starting over in her early 30s. My grandmother helped out a lot, and we lived with her for a few years.
Living with my grandmother came a generous serving of Silent Generation bullshit, which mostly contained “insulting” and “judging.”
She would say things to me like I have “big club legs,” for example. I’m not a “skinny marink.” Oh, and in the summer if I was tan, I wasn’t as tan as my cousin, who looked like “a little colored boy.” I hope you’re getting the visual.
She’s not a bad person. She’s just a woman who lived in a two-stoplight town for her entire life, worked in a factory that she walked to, and didn’t really care to learn about the world. She still can’t operate a cellphone, a credit card, or pump gas.
My grandmother spent a lot of time staring out the window at the neighbors, Ann and Bubbles (now both dead), to “see what they were doing” and criticize …whatever she saw.
I once wrote an entire essay to my list years ago about the time she came outside and berated me for playing pretend with my collection of bouncy balls in the front yard. She essentially told me that if I am caught “talking to myself” someone will lock me in a psychiatric hospital.
(Yo, no word of a lie, I can't tell you how many times I was threatened with “the psychiatric hospital” in my life. It’s a good thing I had role models on TV who were emotionally regulated and understood that being a kid was very hard. See: The Orange Years: The Nickelodeon Story)
The piece I wrote years ago is called “THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU,” and it is still available on my website here.
I actually saved an image of a reply I got to it from my dear, dear, dear friend who is in his 50s, also raised by Silent Generation, which said:
I’m not a generation expert. I wrote one paper about it in graduate school, enough to get familiar with Strauss & Howe, and that was about it.
However, looking back at these experiences, I see where the shame originated.
This was… massively fucked up. I guess, though, despite seeing all of this, my grandmother didn’t birth me. When someone doesn’t birth you, your brain doesn’t attach to them in the same way because they are not solely responsible for your survival as a young human. It’s a weird psychological thing that happens unconsciously. The book Positive Intelligence explains it very well.
My mother passed very little “shame” onto me; however, I did get some of it.
Like a lot of people, I started believing lies, like we should hide our light, and minimize our accomplishments, our gifts, and our strengths… I believed all of those lies because that seemed socially acceptable. All it really did was make me fat, sorry, sad, and depressed.
I drank a lot, because that’s apparently what you do when you’re trying not to be great. You drink and make fun of people for their brightness, you talk smack, you don’t try hard… You pretend you’re “just average” and secretly get upset when any person has any sort of achievement or recognition…. What you don’t realize is that you’re upset because you’re massively disrespecting yourself.
I played along with these learned Boomer ideals until I was in my early 30s, and I decided to take it upon myself to run my first-ever long-distance race: a half marathon.
Then, I experienced something incredible.
As I wrote in my piece, “Step 1. to finding your soulmate...”
“when I did that thing, I began, for one of the first times in my life, to know what it felt like to feel love from the inside.
It’s that feeling that you are complete as you are, that there are no missing pieces, and that everything that is you is completely perfect in the world as it is. It is wholeness, full and complete, missing nothing.
That feeling that I talk about, write about, and discover again and again after periods of it being away is what I call “The God Feeling.”
Oddly, this has nothing in the world to do with religion. I don’t have a religion, and I think that, too, contributes to my lack of shame. (While some kids were in Sunday school hearing about what awful sinners we all are, I was watching Garfield and Friends on the couch.)
The God feeling is a knowing that you are inherently worthy and that to feel complete and one means you must exercise your greatness to the fullest extent possible. The shame comes only from not doing so.
As I wrote in that piece:
“I had never felt a pride or a love like that in all of my existence.
It was a love… for me.
That love I now call “the God feeling.”
I can’t tell you what it is; you can only know it.
It’s as if there’s a burning light inside of you, and that light is so powerful it wants to expand so far that your physical skin bursts away from your body so the light can illuminate the entire planet.
And you stand there, a ball of light, and people can’t help but be mesmerized by your radiance.
If I had to get close to describing it, that would be it.”
This is why I don’t feel shame anymore.
Often, but especially when I run, I remember the moment, the time, the place, and the experience where I began seeing myself as priority one. I am. And I am priority one.
It wasn’t some bullshit line some personal development person told me and I just pretended I got it; It wasn’t that I filled out the stupid checklist and carried out the “OK I’ll do whatever you say and hope it sinks in someday.”
No. This was divine knowing.
Yeah, I had shame installed by a Silent Generation member.
Yeah, I had people who threatened me when I was bright.
Yeah, I had all sorts of experiences where I would ridicule and mock joy, lightness, and celebrations. Don’t even get me started on alcohol culture and how the first thing we want to do when something great happens is dull it with chemicals.
I had all that shit. And I decided “no more.”
And you can decide that too…. at any time.
Any fucking time.
And if you want to sit here and write me the story as to WHY you can’t, that’s the first behavior for you to eliminate. Every. time. you. tell. a. story. you. reinforce. that. story. in. your. unconscious. mind.
I’m sorry that the people born in the 30s hated themselves.
Sorry it trickled down, whether you’re a Boomer, Xer, Millennial, or the great admirable Gen Z. (I love Gen Z.)
Sorry. But… shame can die with you.
Your vivid depiction of the morning walk to the Queens 10K and the runners' shared energy truly resonated with me. As a runner, too, I found your reflections on the interplay of movement, music, and spirituality beautifully conveyed. Thank you for sharing such a powerful, reflective piece. Another brilliant one. :)