When I was a senior in high school, my guidance counselor, Robert, called me into his office.
In all my years of school, I had never been “called into an office.” I was the kind of kid who didn’t get noticed, for better or worse. So I walked in nervous, with my stomach in knots.
The SAT scores had come out, and I hadn’t done well. Robert didn’t soften it. He looked at me and said:
“You need to adjust to the idea that you will be a factory line worker for the rest of your life.”
That was it. One test score, one conversation, and a man with authority over me decided my future.
Let me say clearly that there is no shame in factory work. Some of the finest people I’ve known spent their lives on a line. My point isn’t that the job was beneath me. It’s that someone else decided who I was and where I belonged, and he expected me to accept it.
The Backstory
To understand why those words landed so hard, you need to know what came before them.
My home was abusive. I was the quiet, shy kid with few friends. Lunch was something I dreaded every single day. I would eat as quickly as I could, then go out into the hallway and lean against a wall until afternoon classes started.
Most of my classmates ignored me, and a few bullied me. From seventh grade through twelfth, I was miserable, and I was afraid of going to school every day.
It wasn’t only the students. Many teachers were unkind, too. In those days, students were still paddled. I was mostly just ignored by the faculty, and being invisible has its own kind of pain.
So when Robert spoke, he wasn’t telling me something new. He was confirming what I had been told in a hundred quiet ways for six years: You don’t count for much.
What Humiliation Really Is
I’ve spent much of my life studying humiliation, and moments like the one in Robert’s office are a big part of why. Today there is even a worldwide network of scholars devoted to the subject, Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies.
We often confuse humiliation with embarrassment, but they’re very different. Embarrassment is tripping on the stairs in front of people. It stings, you laugh it off, and it passes.
Humiliation is when someone with power over you lowers you. They put you in your place and tell you who you are and what you’re worth. Robert didn’t just deliver bad news. He assigned me a place in the world.
Humiliation is also different from shame. Shame says, I am bad. Humiliation says, Someone has put me down, and I didn’t deserve it. When you’re young, though, you can’t tell the difference. You swallow the humiliation, and over time it turns into shame. You start to believe the verdict.
That’s what I did for years. I blamed my classmates, and I blamed myself.
Humiliation doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it’s a teacher who never calls on you, or classmates who look right through you. Sometimes it’s a hallway wall you lean against every day because there’s nowhere else you’re welcome.
Graduation Night
I applied to college anyway, even though I was sure my grades would hold me back. The college accepted me, but on academic probation: if I didn’t make good grades my first semester, I would have to leave.
On graduation night, I left the auditorium and went for a drive through town by myself. I had a heartfelt talk with myself, the most important conversation of my young life.
I made two vows. I was going to learn how to study, and I was going to have friends.
Looking back, I can see that something important happened in that car. Robert had offered me an interpretation of my life, and that night I decided to reject it.
In my doctoral work, I developed a model I call EIR: Experience, Interpretation, and Response. (I wrote about it in Starting Over Later in Life: Why We Never Stop Becoming.) Life hands us experiences. We interpret them, and then we respond. Robert handed me an experience and his interpretation of it. On graduation night, I chose my own interpretation and my own response.
The First Semester
My first semester of college changed everything.
I made many friends, and most of them are still my friends to this day. That is a rare gift. I worked hard, studied, and made the dean’s list. There was my first party, too, and my first taste of alcohol. My friends and I joined clubs and even started some of our own, including a drama club.
I felt a joy and happiness I had never known.
This isn’t a story of self-pity. It’s a story of growth. I opened myself up to new experiences. Was it scary? At first, yes. But I was determined to prove Robert wrong.
The Damage Takes Longer to Repair
I’d love to tell you that one good semester erased six bad years, but it didn’t.
There was a lot of damage to repair. Some of it, especially with my high school classmates, took until just the last couple of years to heal. For decades, I avoided them entirely. I didn’t go to reunions, and I steered clear of any chance encounters. I carried the blame for a very long time, some aimed at them and some at myself.
That’s one of the truths about humiliation that doesn’t get said enough. You can outgrow the circumstances long before you outgrow the wound. Healing doesn’t run on a schedule. Sometimes it takes most of a lifetime, and that’s all right.
A Life of Reinterpretation
Since those days, I’ve had many experiences, good and bad, and I’ve spent my life trying to make sense of them. My interpretations have led me to new experiences. They’ve also led me to look again at old ones and see them differently. Along the way, I developed an openness to new experience, and that openness has changed my worldview more than once.
After earning my bachelor’s degree, I became a teacher. After a few years of teaching, I entered the seminary, and I was ordained six years later. I served as a Roman Catholic priest for a time. Eventually, I decided to leave the Church and pursue other paths.
Starting Over, Again
That decision brought its own hard lessons. As a priest, I had very few worldly skills, because the Church took care of most practical matters. When I left, I learned that some people who had wanted me in their lives no longer had any use for me. I faced rejection, and I had no marketable work skills to speak of.
For nearly a year, I worked as a temp in administrative assistant jobs. I’ll admit there were days when I heard Robert’s voice again.
Then I landed a position that changed my life once more. My job was to audit a federal contractor, a subsidiary of a Fortune 50 company, to make sure it complied with federal regulations. That job gave me knowledge that propelled me forward in the company. I moved through many positions, earned the respect of management and senior executives, and received many promotions and accolades over the years.
From Temp to Ph.D.
I knew my master’s in theology wouldn’t take me far in the corporate world, so I earned an MBA. As that program ended, a couple of my professors approached me and asked whether I’d consider pursuing a Ph.D. I thought it over and decided to do just that.
On the way, I earned my third master’s degree, in Human and Organizational Development, the same field as my Ph.D. Before retiring from corporate life, I began teaching at a university and continued for many years into retirement. Eventually, I stepped away from teaching to focus on writing and on building this website.
Not bad for a kid who was supposed to spend his life on a factory line.
What I’d Want You to Take From This
If you’ve ever had a “Robert” in your life, someone with authority who told you who you were and where you belonged, here is what I’ve learned.
Their verdict is an interpretation, not a fact. It may have come from someone with a title, an office and a test score in hand, but it’s still only an interpretation. You’re allowed to choose another.
Humiliation tells you more about the system than about you. A school that let a shy, frightened boy lean against a hallway wall alone every day for six years failed him. The failure wasn’t in the boy.
Healing can take a long time. Don’t measure your recovery against anyone else’s. Some of mine took more than fifty years.
And if you are the person in the office, whether you’re a teacher, counselor, parent, boss or pastor, please remember that your words carry more weight than you realize. A young person may carry them for the rest of their life. Make sure they’re words worth carrying.
Robert, wherever you are: thank you. You were wrong, but you gave me something to push against.
Has someone ever told you who you were going to be? Did you prove them wrong, or are you still working on it? I’d love to hear your story in the comments.
You’ll find more essays like this in the Dignity & Humiliation and Becoming sections, and you can read a little about me and The Emergent Self.
