明镜周刊 is a phrase I know that many people would probably find offensive. And they’re probably very aware, even though we’ve been given this phrase, that we often don’t want to see it because it’s embarrassing.
We see these phrases all the time in our lives, but when we read about them in books or see them on television, we often do what the author doesn’t expect us to do and say “ooh, that’s a great phrase!” We’re not thinking “Wow, this is a really cool phrase!” nor are we thinking “How on earth did that guy get that from the dictionary?” We’re just thinking “I have to check this out.
Its a common mistake that people make when they see a phrase like this (or any other) that they think means “This is very embarrassing”. But really its just a statement about how we feel, because we feel like we should be embarrassed.
This is true. But what it suggests is that we should feel embarrassed but not ashamed. And so we feel embarrassed when we say, “I’m embarrassed”, but we feel ashamed when we say, “I’m embarrassed,” because we know we should just say, “I’m embarrassed.” This is also true of the other person saying, “I’m embarrassed,” but not embarrassed at all.
Okay… the idea here is that we feel embarrassed because we feel like we should feel ashamed and ashamed because we know we should be embarrassed. That’s why we feel embarrassed when we say, Im embarrassed, but we feel ashamed when we say, Im embarrassed, because we know we should just say, Im embarrassed. “I’m embarrassed” is a word. We can use it as a noun, but that’s not the same as being embarrassed.
This is similar to how a person feels when people say, Im embarrassed, but not embarrassed at all. We feel embarrassed because we have an idea that we should feel ashamed, but we know that we shouldn’t.
What can you do to avoid embarrassment? You can put the brakes on embarrassment by simply saying, Im embarrassed. This is a simple and useful way to make sure you don’t put yourself in a bad light because a person with self-awareness is able to exercise a little meta-cognition and say, “Hmm… every time my sister calls me and asks for money, I end up drinking a lot of vodkas.
You can also stop embarrassing yourself by simply saying, You know, I just want to do the right thing. What you cannt do, though, is make all of the right excuses. “I’m a big guy and I’m used to carrying a big gun. You can’t do this” might sound great, but it’s not going to work; people will just back off.
People will just back off because no one wants to see you make a big deal out of something they know nothing about. For example, in my life I have been the victim of over-the-top claims of rape, abduction, and a myriad of other instances where I’d never even been there. I also have been the victim of a few lies. And I dont feel the need to make an issue out of them either.
Most people, however, would be able to see through that. Ive been the victim of claims of rape and other things for way too long now. Thats because a lot of people have the same issues that I do. In fact, I dont even want to point out that a lot of these rape claims are false claims. I also dont want to point out that a lot of these “other things” were fake.
