"What's your most embarrassing moment?" It's a classic ice-breaker question to which most people have an immediate memory of when their misfortune had placed them in an unfortunate spotlight. I have never been able to conjure an answer to this question. I honestly cannot think of a single time when I have felt embarrassed.
What even qualifies as an embarrassing moment? An event that is embarrassing is one that causes confusion and/or shame while simultaneously evoking uncomfortable sensations of self-consciousness.
So, that isn't to say that I've never done to make a fool of myself, or that I'm always able to gracefully recover from all of my social missteps, but rather that I've never felt any sense of shame, regret, or uncomfortable self-consciousness as caused by my own undeniably inept actions. I tend to see these moments that would embarrass many as opportunities to laugh at how truly ridiculous life is.
Every moment that has been conceivably embarrassing that I've had in my life I have always recognized as having the incredibly important potential for a great, hilarious story down the road. My daily life is full of moments that are hypothetically embarrassing, but I tend to spend too much time reveling in the joy of the pure comedy of it all to experience any sensations of shame or regret. It is incredibly fulfilling, to me, to take all of the embarrassing experiences that I've encountered in my life and turn them into instances of reflection on the true absurdity of the world.
Sometimes life is a phenomenally enjoyable place to be, but on other occasions, it can feel as if dark, oppressive, and existential panic is the only rational headspace within which to live. At the end of the day, being able to step back from a situation and reflect on how entirely ludicrous and irrational the world is through the lens of a moment that could otherwise be considered embarrassing is a wholly valuable skill. It is entirely more productive to fill one's life with laughter and positivity than it is to spend ages mulling over so-called "embarrassing moments." To this day, whenever I am asked to reveal my most embarrassing moment I always respond with a bemused, "I don't have one. I guess I just have an unusually high tolerance for shame."
One of my favorite quotes comes from Oscar Wilde's 1880s play, "Vera; Or, The Nihilists," and is as follows: "Life is far too important a thing to ever talk seriously about." This rings true to me when it comes to my self-deprecating tendencies in my sense of humor. Life in and of its self is entirely ridiculous, and the faster one can come to realize this, the easier and more entertaining it all becomes.
Zoey Deschanel speaking about every human being.
