The Death of Shame

I, more than most, am repeatedly reminded of the depravity this generation is laced with. As much as I try to stay away from categorical railings against society at large, I've noticed a pattern in the attitudes and behaviors I see in people - not just the ones I have to mess with, but ones I hear and read about in other places. In my opinion, people aren't engaging in mischief and mayhem because the world is becoming inherently more evil...I think it has to do with the apparent death of shame in our society.

From time immemorial, shame has been the great check and balance that has guided behaviors within societies. In ancient cultures, family was paramount, and to willfully transgress a relationship with God or man meant bringing shame upon your family. This dynamic obviously doesn't come into play much any more. For one, "family" has so many meanings that it means nothing. Not when I see more love in foster homes than within nuclear families sometimes. Not when probably 85% of the calls I work involving 'families' include only one parent.

The single parent aspect is of extreme importance. This is a daily observance for me, and it's more subversive than we give it credit for. Most people, when they think of the concept of divorce within families with children, picture a season of trauma followed by a slow but steady process of healing. This may be true in some cases, but it's not what I'm seeing. More often what I'm seeing looks something like this:

Two people who have what should be obvious incongruities and incompatibilities marry anyway and then, for some reason or another, choose to have children. Perhaps they don't give themselves time to settle into their married lives; maybe they don't see themselves for who they are as a couple; possibly they think that a child will magically fix what is broken within their marriage. Whatever the reason, a dependent entity is created.

At some point after this, the fissures begin to turn into chasms. Perhaps once settled they realize they cannot function connected to the other; maybe something makes them realize who they really are; possibly they look up from changing a diaper or packing a lunchbox and realize that falling in love with their child hasn't caused them to fall in love with their spouse.

And so they destroy their bond of promise and go their separate ways, with great financial and emotional cost. Or, increasingly, because they are already financially strapped they have no choice but to co-exist in a venomous environment, remaining married only because their checkbook holds them at knifepoint. This obviously provides a horrifying paradigm of domestic life for any children pattering around the house.

Either way, from that point forward, their children no longer have a unified entity known as 'parents' but rather separate entities known as 'my mom' and 'my dad.' I'm going to my mom's house; I'll be at my dad's this weekend. And, as a seeming rite of passage, each usually seeks to mollify the trauma by gift-giving or, more insidiously, a softened disposition toward discipline. Thus come the choruses of "Mom always lets me do this" and "Dad gives that to me all the time."

This is a killer on two fronts. First, mom and dad usually don't understand that love does not mean acceptance and tolerance. Love for them seems to be sheltering Junior from the impact of reality. Second, Junior, especially if a teenager, gets a new nuclear weapon called volitional residency. Translation? "Oh, yeah? Well maybe I'll just live with Dad/Mom." The fruits of both sides are awful.

They're what produce the teenagers I'm seeing on the street. The seventeen year old girl with over two thousand dollars in cash in her purse and no clue about how to start a savings account because mom owns a business and "takes care of that stuff." The fifteen year old who didn't just sneak a random beer, but shoplifted a bottle of liquor, drank the whole thing, then stumbled drunk across five lanes of traffic while cars dodged him. The fourteen year old girl who sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes at me when I suggested that she was in the wrong for, you know, stealing things.

I harp on the teenagers. But they're just the poster children. Their parents don't have any shame, either. No shame in lying. No shame in drunkenness. No shame in infidelity. No shame in acid tongues and erupting tempers. Why? Because shame requires that the one shamed be in the minority. To be a sore thumb among their peers, someone to look upon with pity and disdain. The problem today is that lying, drunkenness, infidelity, and anger are, in a wealth of circles, normal behavior.

Many of us think 'normal' relates to some standard, but we forget that normalcy is subjective, and requires only that 51% of a group exhibit the trait. If most people lie, is there really any shame in lying? Who is left to judge? The odd people are suddenly the ones naively telling the truth. They are the ones scorned and laughed at and pressured to conform to the group's collective behavior. And since the human heart yearns to be accepted, this is all too often what ends up happening.

So what's my grand, sweeping solution this time? Well, I guess it's just being weird. If 51% of people are doing something wrong, it suddenly becomes normal, but it doesn't become right. Distill truth from chaos and drink deeply from its depths. Figure out who you are and anchor yourself there - for it would be sorrowful indeed to look back at your life and realize that in trying to live by others' lamplight, you became a thousand things to a thousand people - but you were never you.

In the end, if you whore your integrity out to the whims of others, shame will live.

But you will die.

Twilight's Whispered Whispers

There is something inherent within the heart of man, something as passionate as it is pervasive, that will forever cast the aspersions of discontent within his soul, mercilessly tormenting him with the shadows of fear, raspily whispering sweet discord into his ear. Promising the promise of transcending his turmoil, but ever reminding him of the scores of present absences in his life. The great question of our existence is not one of how we have become, for we are; nor is it one of how we shall depart, for depart we shall. No, the question is simply this: shall we regard this pervasive passion as friend, or as foe?

This passion, like most others, is a quiet thing. It is not like lust, that blind and obnoxious beast with no regard for the delicacies imbued within the finer emotions of our lives. No, this passion speaks loudest when it doesn't at all - when it makes itself known simply as a gravity, new and foreign, gently but insistently tugging upon one's countenance. Happiness seems to no longer be defaulted to, but rather seems a series of momentary diversions from a brooding state of contemplation. Most despise this state of affairs, and will expend seemingly boundless energy and resources in order to overthrow its influence. We rail against the dusky twilight of the unknown, unmindful that it harbors our whispering passion. Neglecting that while the whispers are inherently neither good nor ill, they lace the very air we breathe with their aroma, and cannot be ignored.

Our great issue with the whispers whispered by this pervasive, passionate something is most often not one of perception, but of discernment. We usually know that they are there, but they are so frequently lost in the maelstrom of our circumstances that we exhaust ourselves with the strain of attempting to gather their message. The frustration this engenders within our spirits usually fosters a sense of resignation to our present circumstance as we simply learn to tolerate the gentle insistences of these passionate whispers. As we commit the atrocity of allowing the joyful, dreaming child within us to become jaded. Realistic. Logical. Of allowing our gaze to forsake our horizons in favor of our toes or, God forbid it, our traveled path behind.

And thus we are again faced with the question of how to regard this persistent something that whispers in the shadows. There are those who regard the whispers with acrimony - but these people usually mistranslate the message they render. You see, they permit the unfounded assumption that the unease the whispers create regards their temporal circumstance. Unwilling to discipline themselves toward the end of mastering the fears that swirl within their chests, they use their hands to make seismic changes in an effort to mitigate the restlessness they feel. Those who regard the whispers with such animosity wrongly judge that their message is to abandon their beloved, or to buy things they cannot afford, or to set fire to the bridges that span some chasm or another in their lives. They judge that their unrest points to a need to change something that surrounds them.

Those who count the passion as an ally, though, those who have mastered the craft of harnessing their emotions, know that its whispers bid them change not what surrounds them, but what suffuses them. What lies within. This passion that makes us discontent with where we are wants us to change ourselves.

Every time you hear the whispers, listen carefully. Forsake the temptation of considering what they are calling you out of, and focus instead on what they can lead you into. Use their message as a stimulus for growth, not escape. Much has been made of changing the world, but I know firsthand that it's a fool's errand. Change yourself.

There is something inherent within the heart of man that insistently whispers to him from the twilight.

The whispers whisper a message of hope.

The whispers whisper a message of woe.

The whispers whisper, "Friend or foe?"