Fear, Shame and Kindness

Mad To Live: My Manifesto

It’s been almost four months now since I relaunched this blog, setting out as I always do with no clear aim in mind, just the feeling that I needed to write, knowing at some level deep down that the process of doing so would reveal the reason why. I find that these things tend to become clear via a series of small epiphanies, each one casting more light on whatever lies within, until eventually I am able to articulate what started as a gut conviction. In other words, after four months I am finally beginning to understand what it is that I am drawn to via this space. That’s what I wanted to write about briefly today.

For the last week at work I have been providing cover for a service that operates largely outside the realm of my knowledge and experience. I don’t say that with any false modesty. I have been quite literally the person on the end of the phone that I would generally be calling for advice. I was anxious going into it, dreading the exhaustion of working constantly outside of my comfort zone. But it panned out very differently.

The first thing that my consultant did on Monday was to encourage me to come to him with any questions. I expected as much, I have the great chance to work in an incredibly supportive hospital. But he then went on to tell me of a time in his own training when he had just started a job in his chosen specialty, of how difficult he found it, of how he imagined his bosses wondering why on earth he had been selected for the role. Essentially he was saying: I have been in your position and felt the same fear and shame, and it is normal to feel that way, I will not think judgmentally of you for asking for help. Perhaps one of the kindest and most generous things that anyone has ever said to me.

From the beginning, I have been acutely aware of a current of discordance underlying this blog. I am shy, I am quiet, I am inherently reserved. I do not care to foster my opinions on others, just as I do not care to have others foster theirs upon me. Drawing attention to myself without reason goes so strongly against everything that I am. So I struggled a lot with an inner voice and sense of embarrassment and shame: who cares what you think about this or that, how presumptuous to think that anyone would want to read about your life, would care to know what you’re doing, how you feel. And yet deep down I knew that there was something to it. That there is something powerful that lies in affording others an insight into your own weaknesses and struggles. In sharing not a highlight reel, but a series of candid authentic moments.

I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.

Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

I believe in living deliberately, with intention. And I hope through my writing to show how I live – in all of its terror, mundanity, and glory – because I know instinctively that the things I share are things that I want and need to hear from others, things that I actively seek out from others, to remind me that I am normal, and not alone.

I felt liberated this past week. That so-often quoted passage from East of Eden – and now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good – never felt more true. If I can offer anyone else the same by sharing insights into my own life, I think that is one of the most valuable things I will ever be able to do. So I hope you find something here that comforts you, that perhaps echoes thoughts or feelings you may have had, that makes you feel better in however small or insignificant a way. Because it all adds up, it all matters.

Sending you love,

Z

---

For more eloquent writing on the topic of kindness, check out these two pieces: https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/the-need-for-kindness/ and https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/aphorisms-on-kindness/.