Red-Faced!

Not for nothing, the people I most admire in the World are those least easily embarrassed... No... It’s true.

Of course, it’s not universally, true, I don’t admire the sort of utter ass-hats who go through life treating people badly, riding rough-shod over their feelings by embarrassing them in public and not giving a damn about any of it. 

No, I’m talking about the sort of people who can let loose with an utter lack of inhibition, in whatever they do, who can dance as if no one is watching, without the crutch of inebriation, who can throw back their heads in abandon and laugh with their whole bodies, who can  recognise when they’re wrong and make unapologetic amends rather than bluster or try to cover their tracks.

Those are the people I most admire, and that is the sort of person I would like to be.

I’m not sure, as I’m often not sure, whether this sort of thing is down to nature or nurture. I’m not sure whether a person is like that because he is born to be or because he is made to be, but whichever it is, I wish I had a bit more of that particular quality or character trait. I wish I was less inhibited. I wish I cared a little less what other people thought. I wish I didn’t embarrass quite so easily. I wish I could let loose a little more freely and a little more often.

It strikes me that the less inhibited a person can be, the more she is likely to be able to live in the moment... in the present, and, as far as I can tell, that’s where all the good stuff is.

Of course, I’m not entirely buttoned down and clammed up, and hamstrung. Of course, once in a while, I do throw caution to the wind. It almost always happens entirely by accident, and I catch myself, unawares, thrilled or moved by something, or transported by a feeling that I didn’t look for or wasn’t expecting. Then, everything stops, everything stands still and I am transported.

I love those moments; they give me some of the purist pleasures of my life, but I have to beware. I have to beware that I don’t think about them too hard afterwards, that I don’t deconstruct them too thoroughly, because, who knows what embarrassments they might contain? Who knows what madness in them lies?