Shame
The other day I had to ask for help in the club locker room. It wasn’t asking asking for help so much that embarrassed me as how the help itself intruded into my personal space, unnecessarily but with kindest intent. I was reminded of Socrates’ question to Euthyphro: “For is there anyone who, in feeling shame and embarrassment at anything, does not also at the same time fear and dread …?”
After I finished my usual bicycling exercise in the pool that day, I was feeling high and hopeful that my back was getting better … until I tried to open my locker. Because the club was so busy, I had had to put my clothes and shoes into a locker on the bottom row. As soon as I bent over to dial the combination on my lock, my back started hurting. So, I missed the first try. With each subsequent attempt the pain surged and my efforts became more and more erratic. Finally, I could barely stand with pain throbbing continuously even when I stood up and rested. I needed help.
When the man in the locker next to mine came, I asked him to dial my combination. He tried but also failed after a few tries because he didn’t have his glasses. He went looking for someone else to help and found someone who got the lock open quickly.
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Getting dressed for me has become quite complicated at home. In the locker room I dress standing up because the benches are so low with no handholds to steady getting up and down. With the help of a reacher-grabber, I can get dressed without bending over, even from a lower locker.
It’s a slow, awkward process, but eventually I get dressed. I use the reacher to put on my underwear. Usually after getting my feet through, I need to use the handle on my cane as a hook to pull them up. That’s the routine. That day, however, as I was turning to get the cane, my neighbor reached over and pulled up my underpants for me. I thanked him but said I had been going to use my cane, trying to preserve whatever little dignity I had left. I still thanked him again as he was leaving for being so helpful.
While it might be expected that I would feel embarrassed about what happened, it was more a strange feeling, invaded but ok with that. A mild form of the fear that Socrates says goes along with feelings of shame. In this case fear of suddenly having a strange hand stick in a very private place. There was also male dread at appearing weak.
As I’ve described in earlier blog posts on my website, Laura suffered terrible shame because of her aphasia. For her it was a fear of appearing stupid and dread of what that would mean for her status in a highly competitive workplace. She had a very Aristotelian sense of shame. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines shame (aischúnē) as fear of disgrace or disrepute. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle defines aischúnē as “pain or disturbance in regard to bad things, whether past, present, or future, which seem likely to involve us in discredit ….”
My embarrassment was less serious and more fleeting.
