With the holidays still fresh in my memory I was surprised by the news about a lobby for a new national holiday: Carnival. “What?” Was my first reaction, “We’ve got already so many mandatory and official holidays, why one more?”. What I hear is: “We want more alcohol!”.
A satirical news item on this topic stated that drinking on Ascension Day is not that cool so having a Carnival day to do so is much more practical. This only reinforced me in my opinion that a lot of people look forward to specific events, happenings, parties and opportunities just to drink and get drunk. I guess that getting drunk is in this context is synonym to having fun.
I know I have prejudices on people wanting to drink alcohol in any opportunity just because it makes them feel more at ease. So, I wonder, what is the problem here? Are we not able to socialize when fully aware and conscious of ourselves? Are we afraid of not being able to fit in with other (drunk) people and miss an opportunity to have fun without the restrictiveness of our sense of responsibility and maybe to suppress or ignore that tiny bit of fear we have?
I regularly find myself in situations where most of the people around me are drinking and have no problems in having as much fun as they have with the advantage that I am sober and fully aware of what I say and do. Sometimes it gets harder to have real conversations with people and I usually do not tend to stay until very late as the fun to interact with people fades away at the same pace people’s awareness is fading away.
In my case, not having chosen for alcohol fumes to filter my fears and social anxieties, I had to face these in full awareness. The result is that it took me a long time before I was able to be self confident in any social situation. I had to go through many challenges related to fear of judgement and feeling unfit for handling interactions in specific situations. I would rather avoid going to social events and parties than having to face these points of uncertainty and fear.
Thanks to a process of self discovery that allows me to discover the real person I am with all the shortcomings and skills, I’ve been building my self confidence up to a point that I am able to participate in any kind of social event just by being myself with the flexibility to have a lot of fun and to discuss serious topics alternately. A big help in this process is the DIP Pro course that helps me to systematically work through many layers of awareness and allowing me to take absolute responsibility for who I am.