EMBARRASSMENT

Discomfort is our friend, we were thinking. I was talking this over with my friend Gabe the other day. We need discomfort in order to be happy. In order to be happy we always need to feel pressure, otherwise we stagnate and die almost immediately. Without projects, without goals (broadly conceived), I stated, we die an almost instant death. And projects and goals (broadly conceived) make us squirm and actually hurt, they cause us suffering. But not all goals and projects (broadly conceived) count as real goals and projects, I hastened to add. Most just fill time, which is itself a worthy goal but not an honorable one, I added. Honor is important to how we spend our time, I told him while drinking coffee in my apartment. We have to have honor and believe in what we're doing, a certain pride that surrounds the edges of our actions and duties, a certain righteousness without which we're dead, really quite dead. We'd be nothing, I stated, in fact usually we're nothing and only sometimes we're something. All these concepts, I said, are interconnected. He agreed, but responded that our projects and goals vary so much in size and content that there's no way to have a standard set—I interrupted him here, perhaps a it's a defect of mine that I interrupt and finish sentences. Of course there's a standard set, I said, you have to do what's honorable and this is always changing, we're speaking pure generalities, I said, about individual goals and projects, but they always have to have a standard set. Of what, he asked. A standard set of what, he asked. I replied a standard set of methods, of ways of doing things, whether we're doing dishes and doing laundry or writing a novel, everything is the same; the how (I emphasized the word) is the most important part, there's always a way of doing everything, everything needs to be done in a certain way and only in a certain way, though technically there are an infinite number ways of doing everything. But really there's only one way. I said all this while drinking too much coffee and repeatedly getting up to change the record, which was an old, relatively bad Talking Heads album. This certain way is the only way to guarantee that something is done in a real way and not an unreal way, I said while mostly focusing my attention on the music. He responded that he didn't agree, that I was exaggerating and that he didn't understand a word I was saying. I responded that I was an automaton, a clockwork person, and any action I take has to be a certain way otherwise it's just automatic. He shook his head in disbelief, and then, of course, I started to question myself, I think, I started to think I had really said too much too quickly. I immediately felt embarrassed, which was a mixture of both feeling like I said too much to someone I didn't know and also like I said too much to someone I did know, both of which are embarrassing and aren't tolerable. To say too much to someone you know is too change everything, I thought to myself; to say too much to someone you don't know is to disregard the relationship, to forget it and destroy it quickly. It's a mixture of these two feelings that I experienced, which is basically what embarrassment is, a not-going-far-enough mixed together with a going-too-far at the same time. Embarrassment is a not-going-far-enough and a going-too-far at the same time. But then, I thought, maybe sharing too much is good. I asked Gabe if sharing too much is a good thing and he just gazed at me with his coffee steaming up in front of his face, both hands clutching the mug. Obviously I said nothing, and then I thought I'd really done it. Everything was shot. His eyes glazed over and I asked him about the Talking Heads album, I realized it was late and I had to work, and nothing more came of the conversation except more discomfort and trouble falling asleep.