“Ag Shame”

“Ag shame” is a phrase we use in South Africa. Nowhere else.

There is an excess of shame in many of us, I get why we have a need to share it.

Except we don’t. The shame is so unbearable to face, that we let it into our language and let it out onto other people as perverted consolation.

I have had to deal with an ocean and a generation of shame in the last few years. This is the part of the year that just cranks it all back up again.

This year I discovered that I have a lot of shame about what I did not do. The times I cowered away from the courageous choice.

Those were the times I contracted into myself, unable to connect: To what is, to what needs to be and to what could be.

PS I wonder if you felt “ag shame” while reading this. It is indeed a useful default, isn’t it?