UNITED STATES—Have you ever been embarrassed? Of course you have, all Americans have it is a part of daily life for most people. Rather it’s asking a person out on a date and being rejected, falling down or up the stairs (yes, I’ve seen it happen), or doing something that just makes you the talk of the town. Why are we talking about the issue of embarrassment? Well, anyone who saw Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve telecast, saw singer Mariah Carey suffer an epic fail.

While hitting the stage to perform, it was apparent that Carey suffered some technical issues with her microphone and ear piece, where she was unable to sing some of her greatest hits. People I’m a firm believer that lip-syncing is over exaggerated and more singers should be READY and PREPARED to sing on cue, whenever they take the stage live. It was so painful, I mean painful to see Carey trance around the stage not uttering a word and just hoping something epic would happen.

I had to cover my eyes, change the TV station, because I felt Carey’s embarrassment in my bones. I had to stop; I had to pause for a moment: why does someone else’s embarrassment feel like our embarrassment? Do we actually place ourselves in the position of those individuals? Do we question what we would do if placed in that exact situation? I absolutely think so. I would have burst out in song as much as possible. Yes, I get that Mariah Carey has tons of songs and attempting to memorize each word from word may seem impossible, but actors and actresses remember tons of dialogue on a given day, so memorizing a song, shouldn’t be that difficult should it?

I think sometimes, when we feel embarrassed we have to learn to grow from it. Embarrassment like failure we have to have happen in order for us to grow. For most people, I think the level of embarrassment does not matter in relation to age. The sting of embarrassment can hurt when you’re very young and it can hurt even more when you get older. I would make the argument that as one reaches his or her elderly years, being embarrassed may not be that detrimental to one’s ego. Of course as a teen it might suck, because social media captures that embarrassment and people can replay it over and over and over again.

Singer Mariah Carey is probably experiencing that right now, and likely will for the next few days until another celebrity does something embarrassing and it becomes the talk of the town. Remember in the media circuit, it’s all about the hottest gossip. The same applies to being embarrassed. You may have been the talk of the town on Monday, but come Tuesday what you suffered will be crumbs to a cookie, compared to what someone else endured.

In essence, don’t think it’s the end of the world. For singers, it could be, and I hate to say this, but Ashlee Simpson who had an inescapable hit, saw her career nosedive after a lip-syncing fiasco, the same with singer Cassie. So when it comes to singing people expect you to actually SING and not move your lips to make them think you’re singing people.

I will warn people to show a bit of sympathy for others. You might be laughing at someone else’s fiasco, but when you have a fiasco yourself, it’s not so funny. So think before you act? We all encounter embarrassing times in our lives, how you react to them determine rather you learn from your lesson or not.