Blame is the main sustenance for shame and shame sleeps in the fertile bed of perfection and over achievement. In our culture we do not allow for making mistakes and this is our Achilles heel. It is implied - at least in my culture - that if mistakes are made they are to be covered up, erased or denied at any cost. Mistakes are punitive. What is so fatal about this tenet is we were born to make mistakes! Everyone! Every human being learns by trial and error.
I'm not really sure what horse blame rode into town upon but it is out to kill us, I swear. I turn a beady and suspicious eye towards puritanical ideologies but that, too, is blaming and it doesn't matter, really where the bad idea came from. What matters is that we work at leaving off the habit of it. What matters is that we allow each other mistakes and room to learn. Fuck shaming and gassing ourselves up on self righteousness. This is something that is almost too simple a principle to apply to our daily lives to believe it would work. It must be done. To continue to wind each other up and grind each other down as we do? It will destroy what is good within us. Making people rich and popular whose only talent is finding fault and blaming others needs to become obsolete. Enough.
Thank you for listening.
Music: This song by REM came to mind. Lets take Michael Stipe's advice and make it not our thing and move on.
You came to bang, bang, bang, bang, bang To blame, blame, blame Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang It's not my thing, so let it go now
The original post in this series of poems by Hafiz (including an addendum regarding the authenticity of these poems) can be found here.
The Gift: Poems by Hafiz and translated by Daniel Ladinsky can be purchased here.