BLOGS

Shame! Public Shame! It has driven many to suicide. Yet, not too many know the pain of it like Monica Lewinsky. Tomorrow her story breaks through Vanity Fair. I hope we will all read it to understand what the media, the internet, and gossip can do to destroy a life. None of us would want our mistakes to be made a public laughing stock.

Every person knows shame. When you feel the ick inside it feels intolerable. You can’t imagine anyone accepting that part of you. You try to keep it inside, secret. You fear severe rejection as a result of the shame and then the loneliness is felt. For many, it is a wave of loneliness in which you feel you are drowning. It is in this lonely emotional place that the suicidal thoughts become eminent and the possibility of suicide can become a probability. Why would you ever wish that experience on another human being? If someone has made a poor decision, they are already experiencing and living with the shame. To make it public is an atrocity that is murderous. Many of our students, athletes, entertainers, and more have had to endure, or have not been able to endure, the public shaming of their indiscretions.

It is a formula or blend of the media, the internet, and the people. The American public seems to have found themselves entertained by others’ suffering and so the media feeds off of that interest. Why? Because people “Judge the way they are fearful of being judged”. That means that because a person fears the shame within their Self they judge the other person for their shameful behaviors. Suffering begets suffering. The more people suffer, the more they live in fear. The more people live in fear, the more they follow. The more they follow, the more they do not think on their own. The media figured this out a long time ago. Now, we have exponentially exploded this with the internet.

I ask all my readers to think twice before ever engaging in the gossip that it takes to propagate the public shaming. Think, inside your Self, that each time you share the shame of another you have harmed another person, whether indirectly or directly. Gossip destroys others. As you read the stories of others’ sufferings, ask your Self what you would need if this happened to you. May you all move one step closer to happiness by clearing your thoughts of others that are destructive or negative.