The Cringe

So for my ‘special’ birthday , some well meaning smart Alec decided to do a photo slide as part of the celebration event. Much kudos for the effort and credit to my parents who were able to produce photos from when I was a baby, so everything from birth to date was on display. I lie not some of it was cringy for me to watch, but being the celebrant I had to put on my smiley face and pretend I was enjoying this part of the event. There was a photo of me I couldn’t get over, as a toddler, crawling around and picking up ‘God knows what’ from the floor and popping it into my month. I can hear you say, ‘but that is what toddlers do’ that knowledge did not help my cringe factor, the cringe barometer was at an all time high level with that particular photo. I couldn’t fully decipher my emotions, a mixture of embarrassment with anger and whatever. I am not sure who or what I was angry with. I couldn’t tell if it was myself for once being a toddler or my parents for preserving the evidence or the well meaning Alec for making it public knowledge. I tried my best to self sooth and self talk myself that this was simply part of the process of growth. I questioned nature on why we had to go through the process of crawling and why the whole growing up could not be compressed and some ‘embarrassing’ aspect cut out all together as they seem to add nothing in the larger scheme of things.

Yes my thinking was ridiculous but how many times have we questioned the ‘crawling stage’ in areas of our lives as adults. Every new area we want to get right quickly, we do not want to crawl and we definitely do not want to pick dirt and put in our month. Whatever happens we do not want any cringy aspect to out experiences. We do not want to kiss any frogs before getting to the Princes, we do not want the inconvenience of being a novice and clumsy. We do not want to look stupid and make a monkey of things because it is painfully embarrassing and our carefully balanced and fragile ego can not handle embarrassment. But the simple truth is that every new area where we are not experienced or proficient, there will be cringy moments, we will have to crawl and eat dirt before we stand, walk or run. It makes no difference whether it is romantic affairs, business ventures, fitness, spiritual issues, academic pursuits, new skills, friendship, new city, new job or whatever etc.

Embrace the cringe, it is just a stage!