I’m at the golf range, warming up before a round. As I hit each ball, I assess my swing, which I’ve been working on for a while. I’m saying things like:
“C’mon, Matt. Stay inside the ball.”
“Good path. Just do that again.”
“Don’t rush your backswing, dummy.”
“Perfect swing. You just hit it off the damn toe.”
When I stop to check the time, the man behind me says, “You talk to yourself a lot.”
I laugh. “I do,” I say. “Sorry. Was it bothering you?”
“No,” he said. “But aren’t you worried about what people will think about you?”
“Not really,” I said. “I don’t care about you at all.”
It reminded me of a moment in an airport a few months ago. As I placed my backpack down on a seat, it slipped off my arm and landed on a man’s foot. My backpack is heavy, so he rightfully grunted in pain.
I apologized immediately, but he said, “C’mon! What’s wrong with you?”
My response:
“I don’t even know you.”
What?” he said.
“I don’t even know you,” I repeated. “Why would I waste my time answering a question like that from you?”
He just blinked at me, rightfully confused, so I picked up my backpack and moved to another seat.
Embarrassment is admittedly not something I feel very often.
I stand on stages and tell strangers about some of the worst decisions and most shameful moments of my life. As one of my friends said, “Matt lives out loud.”
I feel no shame in doing so.
But my lack of embarrassment goes beyond that.
I never mind admitting that I’m ignorant about lots of things.
When I was dating, I asked girls out with ease and accepted rejection as part of the process, without fear or concern.
When I hit a terrible golf shot in front of a gallery of people, I find it incredibly amusing.
A couple of years ago, I spoke to a team of executives at a Fortune 500 company with my fly down and thought it was hilarious. Then I did it again in front of a class of college students at UConn and found it hilarious once again.
I might feel embarrassed in front of people I deeply respect, but even then, it doesn’t happen often. I need to do something especially and unintentionally rotten to feel embarrassed.
I’m allowed to be foolish and ridiculous and imperfect.
I’m human.
But strangers?
Why would anyone care about what a stranger thinks? When I told that man hitting golf balls behind me that I don’t care about him, I meant it. I wasn’t being mean. I simply didn’t care if he found my self-talk strange or cringeworthy. I don’t care if he thought I was odd, crazy, or stupid.
If he suffered a heart attack, I’d be kind enough to administer CPR, and if he had a meaningful golf tip to improve my swing, I’d listen, but otherwise, he can think anything he’d like of me.
He’s a stranger. I will probably never see him again. And even if I did, he’s still a stranger. Who cares?
And that man in the airport?
I definitely won’t ever see him again, so if he wants to ask me a stupid, rhetorical question like “What’s wrong with you?” I’m not going to waste my time answering because I don’t know him and I don’t owe him anything,
Admittedly, I enjoy a good fight, but “I don’t even know you” is a pretty good verbal parry and the stone-cold truth.
Spending a scintilla of time being embarrassed in front of strangers is an utter waste of time.
Embarrassment in most forms is usually a waste of time. It’s a feeling predicated on the bizarre belief that:
- The people around you have never made the mistake you just made.
- The people around you are somehow inherently better than you.
- The judgment of a stranger, or anyone, is somehow relevant to your own self-worth.
It’s not the case.
It’s never the case.
We are all failing, flailing bags of meat surrounded by similarly failing, flailing bags of meat.
Embarrassment is also predicated on the idea that anyone is noticing you at any given time.
Admittedly, in the two cases above, I was noticed, but that’s rare.
Most of the time, no one is noticing us at all. The Spotlight Effect tells us that no one is watching us or even noticing us nearly as much as we think. We assume we have a spotlight on us because we are the main character in our story, but everyone around us is the main character in their story, more focused on themselves than us.
The man hitting golf balls behind me laughed when I told him that I didn’t care about him, and I like to think the laugh was an acknowledgment that I was right, and perhaps even a shift in his thinking about himself, too.
Or maybe he laughed because he thinks I’m an idiot who is still swinging outside the proper path and talking to myself while doing it.
If that’s the case, I don’t care.
I’ve had legitimate moments of embarrassment in my life, but almost certainly far fewer than most people. Though I sit here trying to remember one of those moments, because it would fit well as I close out my thoughts, I honestly can’t recall the last time I felt embarrassed about anything.
I’ve been embarrassed. I know this with certainty. But it’s happened so infrequently that I truly can’t remember one.
But this certainly wasn’t one of them.
