Word of the Week #408:
When I was younger—perhaps sometime in my teens—I would often be surprised and confused when my truthful and accurate words seemed to upset and offend the people around me.
It did not make sense to me.
“I am right! How can you be mad at me when I am right?” Apparently, saying that tends to make things worse.
My eventual response then was to just avoid the truth and tell people exactly what I thought they wanted to hear, regardless of what I actually felt or believed. Of course, that did not work the way I would have hoped.
In hindsight, it makes sense that I always seemed distant to people. Nobody seemed to understand me. Nobody knew who I really was or what I really wanted.
Lately, I have been trying to get back to what I used to be, trying to vocalise only what—and ideally all that—I think and feel. And again, I have had trouble with upsetting people with my words.
Now, of course, I am not one to yield the truth as a weapon on people… at least not the ones I actually care about.
I am going to keep speaking what I think and feel. Hiding behind cleverly worded sentences that may lead people to infer something that I don’t mean at all, that has been a defence mechanism I’ve used for a while, but whom am I trying to defend myself from? The world—or at least my world—is not that bad a place.
Still, I guess I do hold some responsibility regarding the effectiveness of my attempts at human communication. After all, no matter what I think or say or do, no matter how right I think I am, if the people I love feel unhappy or uncomfortable or unpleasant because of it, then I’m probably going wrong on some level.
I’m going to use that belief as a yardstick as I keep figuring out many other things in my life.
It’s a nice yardstick, people tell me. Let’s see how well it works.
