Acting shamefully and needing to confess

I don't know why I did this. It has been bothering me ever since, not obsessively I might add, but on occasion when I remind myself of it. Perhaps it's a form of self-flagellation, the need to feel punished by feeling shame. Shame is an ugly feeling, not one we really need for survival even if Catholic doctrine, the one I was raised with, insists that we feel shame for nearly anything that we do that both Jesus and even Hell's fallen angels, Satan and his cohort of devils, would deem shameful and worthy of punishment. Unless of course I confessed. Yet at best this that I did was no worse than a venal sin. It broke no commandments.

So how best to describe and expiate this feeling of shame? It is through the actual indoctrination of confession drummed into me as a small child. Now I've not been to confession nor received any communion much less darkened the door of a church since I was around 13 or 14 except to attend the funerals of my parents who died within three years of each other which would not have looked kindly upon me had I not attended.There would have been an instance of shame which would have required even more expiation. Now not attending mass, confession or communion that has been going on these past 60 years. And I must admit there is a bone in me that feels the occasional twinge while most of me shrugs. We are brainwashed at an early age and it's hard to clear one's brain completely.

To the event. I was in the supermarket, a large supermarket quite popular but at the time I was there sparsely attended by shoppers. I had placed in my basket a few items, I hadn't bothered to count but they seemed so few I passed by the cashier that was finishing up and headed for the 10 or less express line. I placed everything on the conveyor belt and I still wasn't cognizant of how many items I had. I waited while the cashier finished up with the clearly confused woman who wanted to write out a check. She was elderly maybe a bit older than I but clearly she had cognition problems that might border on dementia. She had her son with her (he kept calling her Mom so. . .) who kept trying to urge her along to the customer service counter that the cashier told her she should go to fill out the check and pay for her purchases.

Clearly she had at least three bags of groceries packed already by her son and placed in the shopping basket. And she clearly had way more than 10 items. Still I didn't think of that at all. I didn't want to show my impatience so I looked around. Finally she started to leave and the cashier turned to me when suddenly I hear a voice behind me, "That looks like you have more than 10 items." First I am horrified as I look and sure enough it looks more like 15 items. I feel mortified. I've broken a rule. I have committed an unpardonable crime, the kind of crime i would hold others responsible for though I never have even though I have thought it many times, many many times when I see shoppers in the express line with way more items than they should have in the 10 or less shopping line. I thought it in the past but that is the difference. I have never ever said anything.

I glance over in the direction of the voice and it's a man 10 or 15 years younger than I am who compounds this bit of humiliation by repeating his accusation. The cashier begins ringing up my items. I look at the man, suddenly I am no longer mortified and also I am not angry. So what do I do? I mock him. In a voice that I have no idea suddenly came from my mouth and sounding exactly like the 12 year old Carmelo, my one time step son, (who today is 36 years old and as far as I know behaves like a typical adult) I say:"Oh oh really, I've got more than 10 items well good for you, you noticed." And if that wasn't enough I repeated myself. The man suddenly bolted away from the line and took his things to another line, checked out before I did and disappeared.

And so there we are and this is how I expiate.

History and the Individual

History does not crush individuals. History is separate from individual lives. History is largely irrelevant to individuals and individuals often deem history is irrelevant to them.  Yet it is history that affects the mass of people. How lucky or unlucky we are to avoid or to participate in history is a choice on the part of the individual. The choice that an individual makes is unique to an individual. It's the same kind of uniqueness one might see in the way a tree grows, a snowflake is formed or when comparing individual fingerprints.

However, if the decision is to actively participate in history or to actively avoid history that is a choice. But not the choice that history itself had made for the individual. Sometimes it seems there isn't a choice. And maybe even sometimes there isn't one. The individual gets swept along. How that individual reacts to history is the outcome for the individual even when the outcome can only be in one direction.

Now this last may seem contradictory given the history that we know of wars past, movements past where many participate and many die as a result but even the non participant dies as well, not having made that choice. Ultimately the individual is completely forgotten unless that individual is an extraordinary participant or non-participant.

What is history? History are the events that are recorded but also recorded rarely if ever without the bias of the historian doing the recording. Ignored or forgotten are the individuals unless the individuals are numerous in a particular event where a mass of them are slaughtered or has accomplished something noteworthy. Yet it's only the event that is known where a large group participated. Even at the time of an event if a particular individual is extraordinary may be forgotten or ignored in time by history. But for the non-extraordinary person it's as if that person did not exist.

For example when we think of the Civil Rights movement that lasted at least in the public's eye well over a decade and accomplished much though not enough, a couple of names stand out: M.L. King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. There were certainly many more extraordinary individuals than those two. Today there is a continuance of civil rights but who can name another extraordinary individual? I'm sure there are some who can but generally there are quite a few. Yet the mass of individuals who made up that movement are unknown.  Another example is when a man stepped on the moon for the first time. Generally we remember Neil Armstrong, maybe Buzz Aldrin (the second man to walk on the moon). But Michael Collins who was in charge of the command module? Largely ignored. What about those thousands who got them all to the moon and then brought them back?   

Ultimately the great majority of individuals are irrelevant to the historical process. Consider us as an ant colony. Each ant has its prescribed role through evolution but not one could possibly grasp the whole.  This is who we are. We are incapable of grasping the whole. 

Does that make history irrelevant in the extreme? Absolutely not. History can't be forgotten. It's how we at this moment have gotten where we are. "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." --George Santayana. Simple in its dictum. But it's not just large historical events but on an individual level it's an individual's history. What choices were made? What choices were ignored? It is easy to blame history for our failures or to applaud history for our successes. What we need to do is to make the leap from history into humanity. How that ever may happen is beyond my understanding.