The other evening I was speaking with a friend, and I brought up something about shame.

Or, at least, that’s what I was trying to do.  Instead, I misspoke and instead of shame what came out of my mouth was “Shane.”

Which, in of itself, was a bit funny.  But then I envisioned this guy Shane, leaning against the wall in the corner, dressed in a to cool to care kind of way, theatrically shaking his head at me.  And in that personification of my shame, I found it completely hilarious.

And surprisingly liberating.  Or perhaps not so surprising, for I’ve seen a bunch of exploration and research lately about this approach of personification.  Mostly it’s where you end up speaking to those unproductive bits of yourself in the second or third person.  With Shane here it might be a bit different, as I’m taking whatever bits of shame I’ve got and sticking them into this Rando McRandomson dude in the corner that I might never talk to.  But it remains fruitful because I don’t need to talk to them.  Firstly, the humour of it all is enough to reduce the significance of everything – as Loretta Laroche would point out, humour in of itself can be excellent at knocking things back into perspective.  And secondly, that kind of random scorn from someone isn’t something I’d likely pay much attention to in the first place.  All of which interrupt any downward spiral and allow mindfulness to return and either complete things or bring them to a place of productive guilt.

Right on.  It was an inadvertent and complete slip of the tongue, but it ended up granting access to a whole bunch of space to live and grow, and a whole lotta peace of mind.