"I am not ashamed to cry. All of us need not be ashamed to cry. In fact, it may be the first step in unfreezing and working toward change."
Unable to be true to their innate natures and being, they still saw themselves as sages. Is this not shameful, that they were not ashamed?
Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest.
We're all bozos on the bus,
so we might as well sit back
and enjoy the ride.
-Wavy Gravy
One of my heroes is the clown-activist, Wavy Gravy. He is best known for a role that he played in 1969, when he was the master of ceremonies at the Woodstock festival. Since then, he's been a social activist, a major "fun-d" raiser for good causes, a Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor, an unofficial hospital chaplain, and the founder of a children's camp for inner city kids. Every four years he campaigns as a candidate for president of the United States, under the pseudonym of Nobody, making speeches all over the country, with slogans like "Nobody for President," "Nobody's Perfect," and "Nobody Should Have That Much Power." He's a seriously funny person, and a person who is serious about helping others. "Like the best of clowns," wrote a reporter in The Village Voice, "Wavy Gravy makes a big fool of himself as is necessary to make a wiser man of you. He is one of the better people on earth."
Wavy (I'm on a first-name basis with him from clown workshops he's offered at Omega) is a master of one-liners, like the famous one he delivered on the Woodstock stage: "What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000;" and this one, on why he became a clown: "You don't hear a bunch of bullies get together and say 'Hey, let's go kill a few clowns.'"
But my all-time favorite Wavy-ism is the line above about Bozos on the bus, one he repeats whenever he speaks to groups, whether at a clown workshop or in a children's hospital. I have co-opted the phrase and I use it to begin my workshops, because I believe that we are all bozos on the bus, contrary to the self-assured image we work so hard to present to each other on a daily basis. We are all half-baked experiments-mistake-prone beings, born without an instruction book into a complex world. None of us are models of perfect behavior: We have all betrayed and been betrayed; we've been known to be egotistical, unreliable, lethargic, and stingy; and each one of us has, at times, awakened in the middle of the night worrying about everything from money to kids to terrorism to wrinkled skin and receding hairlines. In other words, we're all bozos on the bus.
This, in my opinion, is cause for celebration. If we're all bozos, then for God's sakes, we can put down the burden of pretense and get on with being bozos. We can approach the problems that visit bozo-type beings without the usual embarrassment and resistance. It is so much more effective to work on our rough edges with a light and forgiving heart. Imagine how freeing it would be to take a more compassionate and comedic view of the human condition - not as a way to deny our defects-but as a way of welcoming them as part of the standard human operating system. Every single person on this bus called Earth hurts; it's when we have shame about our failings that hurt turns into suffering. In our shame, we feel an outcast, as if there is another bus somewhere, rolling along on a smooth road. Its passengers are all thin, healthy, happy, well-dressed and well-liked people who belong to harmonious families, hold jobs that never bore or aggravate them, and never do mean things, or goofy things like forget where they parked their car, lose their wallet, or say something totally inappropriate. We long to be on that bus with the other normal people.
But we are on the bus that says BOZO on the front, and we worry that we may be the only passenger on board. This is the illusion that so many of us labor under- that we're all alone in our weirdness and our uncertainty; that we may be the most lost person on the highway. Of course we don't always feel like this. Sometimes a wave of self-forgiveness washes over us, and suddenly we're connected to our fellow humans; suddenly we belong.
It is wonderful to take your place on the bus with the other bozos. It may be the first step to enlightenment to understand with all of your brain cells that the other bus - that sleek bus with the cool people who know where they are going - is also filled with bozos - bozos in drag; bozos with a secret. When we see clearly that every single human being, regardless of fame or fortune or age or brains or beauty, shares the same ordinary foibles, a strange thing happens. We begin to cheer up, to loosen up, and we become as buoyant as those people we imagined on the other bus. As we rumble along the potholed road, lost as ever, through the valleys and over the hills, we find ourselves among friends. We sit back, and enjoy the ride.
Who the holy heck is going to talk all high and mighty like about the J-man and tell me that THIS is the American Dream he’s sitting there all right handed and all, patting Him on the back, saying “Hey, good job Dad.” Where the bloody hell is your SHAME America? Wake the heck on up… Did you all miss the memo where it says The New Deal was all about making sure we didn’t succumb to violent revolution?
What shames us, what we most fear to tell, does not set us apart from others; it binds us together if only we can take the risk to speak it.
There is no glory in honesty if it is destructive. And no shame in dishonesty if its goal is to offer grace.
"As leaders, we can waste energy assigning blame for the escalating complexities
of today's leadership challenges, or we can begin to find solutions."
"Throughout the world there are men, women and little children who have not even the essentials to stay alive; they crowd the cities of many of the poorest countries in the world. This crime fills Me with shame. My brothers, how can you watch these people die before your eyes and call yourselves men?"
- Maitreya, the World Teacher
"there is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people"
You can only acquire it successfully if you cease to feel any sense of shame.
This wicked man Hitler, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatred. this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame.
O! while you live, tell truth, and shame the devil.
He was not born to shame: Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit.
That England, that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
There's nothing in this world can make me joy: Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man; And bitter shame hath spoil'd the sweet world's taste That it yields nought but shame and bitterness.
But 'neath yon crimson tree Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame, Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, Her blush of maiden shame.
For here the religion that languishes in crowded cities or steals shame-faced to hide itself in dim churches, flourishes greatly, filling the soul with a solemn joy. Face to face with Nature on the vast hills at eventide, who does not feel himself near to the Unseen?
Scarlett: You should die of shame to leave me here alone and helpless. Rhett: You helpless? (laughs) Heaven help the Yankees if they capture you.
O Father, whose voice I hear in the woods and whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me. I am a man before you, one of your many children. I am small and weak. I need your strength and wisdom. Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunsets. Make my hands respect the things you have made, my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may know the things you have taught my people, the lessons you have hid in every leaf and rock. I seek strength, Father - not to be superior to my brothers, but to be able to fight my greatest enemy, myself. Make me ever ready to come to you with clean hands and a straight eye, so that when life fades like a fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame.
Let no one ever say And say it to your shame- That all was beauty here, Until you came.
[It is] a historic step toward eliminating the shameful practice of racial discrimination in the selection of juries.
Our constitution is named a democracy, because it is in the hands not of the few but of the many. But our laws secure equal justice for all in their private disputes, and our public opinion welcomes and honors talent in every branch of achievement, not for any sectional reason but on grounds of excellence alone. And as we give free play to all in our public life, so we carry the same spirit into our daily relations with one another. . . . Open and friendly in our private intercourse, in our public acts we keep strictly within the control of law. We acknowledge the restraint of reverence; we are obedient to whomsoever is set in authority, and to the laws, more sepecially to those which offer protection to the oppressed and those unwritten ordinances whose transgression brings admitted shame. lb. II, Funeral Oration of Pericles, 37
Her track, where'er the goddess roves, Glory pursue, and gen'rous shame, Th' unconquerable mind, and freedom's holy flame.
Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame, With many a foul and midnight murder fed.
Jesus hath many lovers of His heavenly kingdom, but few bearers of His Cross. He hath many seekers of comfort, but few of tribulation. He findeth many companions of His table, but few of His fasting. All desire to rejoice with Him, few are willing to undergo anything for His sake. Many follow Jesus that they may eat of His loaves, but few that they may drink of the cup of His passion. Many are astonished at His miracles, few follow after the shame of His Cross. Many love Jesus so long as no adversities happen to them. Many praise Him and bless Him, so long as they receive any comforts from Him. But if Jesus hide Himself and withdraw a little while, they fall either into complaining or into too great dejection of mind.
Avoid shame, but do not seek glory,-nothing so expensive as glory.
And there's a lust in man no charm can tame Of loudly publishing our neighbour's shame; On eagles' wings immortal scandals fly, While virtuous actions are but born and die.
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings. To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?
