Have You Been Punk’d Lately?
Dec 9th, 2008 by admin
Have you ever been “punk’d”? You know…had a prank played on you designed to create your most embarrassing moment.
Here’s a wonderful vignette from The Relationship Handbook by George Pransky that lets us feel the emotional affect of a prank. Notice your reaction as you imagine yourself as the person being described below.
“The scene is the lobby of a movie theater. You are standing in line to buy tickets. Suddenly a burly man walks in front of you and steps on your toe. He offers no apology. In fact, he acts like you don’t exist. Anger builds in you.
Suddenly your anger turns to chagrin. You just noticed his white cane and black glasses. Turning to the man behind you, you relate mistake. He laughs and says he knows the alleged blind man. “That man is not blind,” he reports. “He’s just a sadist who pretends to be blind to avoid punishment for his sadistic acts.”
Your embarrassment instantly turns to outrage. “How could anyone be that low?” you ask yourself. You consider telling him off or even taking a punch at him despite his size.
An older man pulls you aside. He tells you that the man behind you is the sadist and the burly man actually is blind. Your outrage turns to confusion and then levity when a middle-aged bald man comes over and says, “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!”
I guess in this day and age, it would be Ashton Kutcher saying, “You’re Punk’d!” But we don’t need Ashton to do the dirty work because we “punk” ourselves all day long.
All it takes is for something to happen that we see, hear or feel, and a thought (an interpretation of the event) immediately follows. That thought takes the form of a story – that’s right or that’s wrong; or that’s the way things should or shouldn’t be.
It’s the story we tell ourselves, of course, that creates the emotions listed in Pransky’s vignette – anger, chagrin, embarrassment, outrage, confusion and finally, levity.
So how do we immediately know what’s right or wrong? Not only do we know it, but we feel absolutely confident that that we’ve got it right. Where does that “knowing” come from?
It’s probably a little intuition plus experience, things like our education, attitudes, values, motives and intent that helps us interpret every present moment.
Weird, isn’t it? We experience the present by assessing it with habitual thinking patterns created from the past. Most of the time that’s a good thing. It can keep us from making life threatening mistakes over and over.
Like all natural gifts, there’s a down side if this ability is overused. It stops continuous growth and learning the very moment we believe a stressful or negative thought without question.
So who would you be if you freed yourself from every automatic assertion and judgment? Who would you be if you tested the absolute truth of your old stories? Who would you be if you accepted reality as it unfolded without judgment and just responded with thoughtful intent and purpose?
Think about it. The only reason Kutcher’s pranks were even mildly entertaining is because we love watching the victims’ violent arguments with reality, “This should not be happening to me!”
What if Kutcher’s so-called victims thoughtfully accepted the staged prank as it unfolded without judging it as good or bad? What if they responded fearlessly or with kindness and understanding? It would be the end of that show, and probably all “reality” TV for that matter.
We too can all end the unnecessary drama in our lives if we stopped arguing with reality. Try it for a day, even an hour, and watch your world change. (See www.thework.com for more information).
