On the Joy of Embarrassment
On a misty walk through my neighborhood this morning I saw a car parked directly in front of a No Parking sign and couldn’t help but feel a resonance. Talking about death in a fiercely death-phobic culture is uncomfortable to say the least, but more than that it often feels like a direct and egregious violation of the rules.
Yesterday I lamented to a new friend that positioning myself as a death contemplation doula, an advocate for reflecting on our relationships to our own deaths, is a recipe for feeling embarrassed on a pretty much daily basis.
To the resignation of my eager heart, more often than not, I am the person that makes things awkward… that unintentionally invites quick subject changes or guarded silences. I don’t push. I understand and respect that we’ll all come to this practice in our own time. But I do get to steep in the embarrassment of knowing I embody the taboo.
I don’t “enjoy” that embarrassment and I often feel my heart racing and my stomach tumbling into my throat, but there is a deeper joy in knowing that I am getting out of my own way for the benefit of the collective. We are in a crisis of death-phobia and grief illiteracy and the way I see it, many of the social and ecological issues we face can be traced directly to the toxic positivity and death aversion of western culture.
I saw a Georgia O’Keefe quote on fear that gave me courage. It said, “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life — and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.” There are things that are scary because they are dangerous & there are things that are scary because they threaten our safe and cozy sense of our limited selves. I don’t know if the rush of blood to my cheeks when my work is received with tepid sideways glances will ever go away, but I’m practicing feeling into the joy of following a calling & knowing that when the work does land, it’s often received like cool water flowing over a long-parched landscape.
It is safe to talk about death. Talking about death will not make it happen. And beyond that, it has the potential to actually save lives. It can be awkward and embarrassing to bring it up, but it can also be liberating, deeply connective & enlivening. It is not without grief or fear but it is in our interest to befriend and get to know those feelings. And it can even be joyful if we let it.