There’s an old adage that expert regatta racers swear by. If you don’t accidentally drift across the starting line every once in a while, you probably aren’t being aggressive enough. To experts, these occasional oversteps signal an ambitious, risk-taking mindset characteristic of the greatest sailing champions.
The lesson in this allegory—that a seemingly lamentable circumstance can actually indicate something much more valuable in the long term—perfectly encapsulates my view of painful emotions.
The value of painful emotions is twofold. First, they serve as a signal of your deeper character—for example, sadness might be a signal that you are compassionate. Second, painful emotions are a call to action—if you’re sad because of an uncaring friend, for example, sadness might encourage you to surround yourself with kinder people. These signals and action steps will differ drastically per person, but in my experience, a particularly notable painful emotion is embarrassment.
To me, embarrassment has always served as a signal of authenticity, a sign that I’m remaining true to my unapologetically excitable disposition. Embarrassment creeps in when an enthusiastic greeting is met with a scornful side eye. When a compliment is met with contempt. When a joke falls so far flat it takes almost a decade to recover. Or when a witty line falls on deaf ears because some boys simply can’t flirt. Whatever form it takes, embarrassment has always reminded me never to compromise who I am, despite some truly mortifying circumstances I’ve found myself in.
So you can imagine my shock and disappointment when I realized, three weeks into Boston College, that not a single embarrassing thing had happened to me during my time here. This realization led me to a minor identity crisis. Did my lack of embarrassing experiences mean I was becoming stagnant? No longer growing or challenging myself? No longer leaning into discomfort? Worst of all, did it mean I had become boring?
But never fear, faithful reader! Little did I know then that embarrassment was just on the horizon, and that very soon, I’d severely regret wishing for it. Strap in, folks. This one’s a doozy.
Picture this. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the entire school is flocking to the Taste of Off-Campus event where restaurants bring free food samples to BC. I’m in the library, frantically trying to crank out an essay minutes before I’m supposed to head to the event with a group of upperclassmen I had only met once before. Luckily, at the last minute, one of them reached out to me very apologetically and said they couldn’t make it due to a plethora of valid reasons. My response? A very normal “no worries! I also have to catch up on some work too, so thank you so much this works perfectly!”
Why couldn’t I have stopped there? This question would soon haunt me.
I then went on to make the worst joke I’ve ever made in my entire life: “If you want to make it up to me I wouldn’t say no to chocolate! 🥰🤸♀️”
Just imagine an underclassman girl you barely know thanking you for canceling, then proceeding to claim you owe her chocolate as compensation for something she had just thanked you for. Even though it was a joke, I hadn’t built up enough familiarity with them for it to land properly. To top it off, this happened over an Instagram DM, which is quite possibly the worst platform ever to make demands of gifts on, even in jest. In my opinion, though, it’s the emojis that plunge this over the edge from embarrassing to truly mortifying.
The instant I sent this, I knew it was a horrible mistake. Nothing can describe the wave of embarrassment and excitement that washed over me because this was it—proof that the good ole days of embarrassment were not yet behind me! Indeed, they were painfully, wonderfully ever-present.
So I did what anyone would do. I called a friend I hadn’t seen in months to freak out with her about this. Then I called another friend, then another, then another. Soon, embarrassment turned to warm belly laughter as we swapped stories, each one becoming wilder and more embarrassing than the last.
Just as I found humor in embarrassment, I implore you to find the value in all negative emotions. An old friend once taught me that it’s the experiences precipitated by extreme nerves that become your biggest success stories. So when I felt terrified to publicly speak at Model UN, my hand was first in the air, winning me an award at my first conference. When I found myself dreading Bulgarian split squats and jumping lunges, I made it a priority to double them in my circuits, and with enough consistency, I became noticeably stronger.
But what about the worst emotions a human can experience? After all, what possible value can be found in earth-shattering grief? Indeed, perhaps there is no inherent value in these emotions, so it is up to each person to decide how best to grapple with them.
Demonstrating one potential answer, American singer-songwriter Andy Grammer decided to “go on the offense” with grief when mourning his mother’s passing. Rather than letting grief seize him without warning, he tried to actively step up to celebrate his mother whenever the opportunity arose: “If I see someone that’s the same age as my mother in front of me in line, I’ll go on offense and I’m like ‘hey I lost my mom, and I don’t get to buy her stuff … would you mind if I … bought your coffee?’” Grammar chooses to step into his grief rather than shy away from it by honoring his mother through acts of kindness. Others might “go on the offense” through their faith, service, or simply a vow to think of their loved one often.
This isn’t me advocating that you simply disregard negative emotions in favor of the positive. In fact, I’m advocating the very opposite. Become so in tune with your emotions that you know what they are encouraging you to do. If you feel grief because of someone’s absence, are there ways you can reproduce their presence through the things that mattered to them? If you feel shame as a result of social alienation, are there safe spaces where you can seek solidarity and support?
To live life to its absolute fullest, you cannot hover safely behind the starting line. The very core of the human experience demands that you take risks, even if the wind is so strong your ship might capsize. Do things so outrageous you feel mortifyingly embarrassed, because what better stories are there to share with your future grandkids? Love so deeply that if your heart breaks, it utterly shatters because how else can you be sure of its infinite capacity to heal and love again? Failure means you tried, sadness means you cared, anger means you still care, and each of them means you are human. So take the risk that the wind might carry your boat across the starting line, or even blow you overboard. There just might be a treasure trove of self-discovery and growth waiting for you in the ocean’s mysterious depths.
