BLAMING (A non-academic essayistic reflection on the inclination to blame)
"You've broken something again!" I shout at my son. "You always break everything."
"But it's not my fault," my son cries. "I didn't do it on purpose."
"Then whose fault is it?!" I scream, still driven by deep frustration.
"Yours!" my son shouts back. "Yours, because you are shouting at me," he adds.
Blaming. A mechanism we all know, yet rarely truly admit to ourselves. Something happens, chaos, frustration, or fear surges within us, and the only strategic step forward appears to be an attack—blaming the other person as the source of the problem and of my own frustration. It seems as though humans have a natural inclination toward blaming, as if this type of attack were a defense against something that is too difficult for them to accept. And too difficult to feel.
Yet, if one awakens in the very act of blaming, they can notice that it is as if their entire inner being were encased in a steel structure, and that which points to the guilt of the other is nothing but a flimsy, sparse caricature trying to keep whatever is behind the wall alive.
What kind of horrors must be unfolding within us for us to build such rigid steel walls to protect ourselves? How fragile are we beneath that very structure?
Blaming, it seems, is at its core a split, at the center of which lives the shame of failure. This type of shame is one of the most gripping, yet least acknowledged. It constricts so tightly that it shrouds the vulnerable and fragile inner core in steel, shielding it from further cruel loss and pain, while simultaneously blocking the healing and regeneration of the soul.
Shame splits one into two. Its grip cannot be softened by willpower or negotiation. It is an archetypal force that will open to nothing other than loving interest. If—in the very moment we tremble with fear inside, our eyes searching and our finger reinforcing a culprit—we can stop and look at this entire peculiar mechanism within ourselves with pure curiosity, we will find that shame, though it may initially seem so, does not stand against us. Instead, like a wise guide, it points in the direction that asks for nothing but our pure, unconditional, loving interest. We will also discover that behind the walls of the structure lies no monster waiting to devour us, but a fragile, wounded, and frightened being terrified that its imperfection will cost it love.
If we can look at the blaming, the shame, and our own hidden pain with interest and love, we will feel the grip of shame soften, and the inclination to blame the other dissolve right along with it. Ultimately, one comes to rest in a moment of realization: that the culprit is a sequence of causes and conditions unknown to us, and that loving interest dissolves not only the shame of failure, but also the heart of the other, who is finally seen in total acceptance.