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September 6 - September 14, 2022
Moving on doesn’t mean forgetting or whitewashing the other person’s behavior. It means protecting ourselves from the corrosive effects of staying stuck. Chronic anger and bitterness dissipate our energy and sap our creativity.
For reasons of his own, Bob was not able to honor her or be kind to her. So she needed to honor and protect herself by refusing to let painful emotions loom so large in her day-to-day life.
As much as we crave a satisfying explanation, the other person may never admit the truth—or even know it.
Although it can be painful, sometimes a person we love seeks distance that we have to accept. Our friends are free to be friends with whomever they choose. Their feelings for us may wax and wane. We want everyone we love to be loyal and stable figures in our lives, but we can’t always have that. Change and impermanence are part of every relationship, and we can’t hold the clock still, much as we may try.
If we live courageously, we will experience—and survive—rejections and losses that are not fair and not talked through. Sometimes in our lives the best course of action is to let go and move on.
No matter how clear or creative our voice, or how persistent our efforts to be heard, we may not get the results we want. Other people may fail to respond to us with sensitivity, empathy, or fairness. They may refuse to respect our request for even a simple behavioral change. They may not show up for the conversation. Still, we may choose speech over silence as a way to honor our own need for language and self-definition.
having a true voice isn’t always the same as spontaneous, unvarnished candor.
Sometimes there is a gap between what we say and what we really feel. This isn’t necessarily a problem. Sharing “true feelings,” while essential in certain circumstances, is highly overrated as a principle to live by. But sometimes there is a gap between what we say and what we truly hope to accomplish in a relationship. Or a gap between what we say and the sort of person we hope to become. Or a gap between what we say, and a deeply held value, belief, and principle. And that’s a problem.
Having an authentic voice is not about speaking from a place of angry reactivity, righteousness, or criticism. Rather, it’s about constructing a more solid and whole self, modeling the behavior we want from others, and thinking about relationship problems with clarity, creativity, and wisdom. Steps in this direction require us not to rush in and tell all, but rather to consider how our words affect others.
our clarity of voice reflects the degree of our self-awareness. Having an authentic voice requires us to operate from core values, rather than in reaction to the other person’s immaturity. We must keep our own immaturity in check, which admittedly is hard to do when we’re caught up in strong emotions. We need to use both wisdom and intuition in deciding w...
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Having an authentic voice requires us not only to speak wisely but also to listen well. When we listen to another person with attention and care, we validate and deepen the connection between us.
People were impressed by her, but didn’t leave her company feeling a greater sense of worth themselves. Audrey had no idea that the gift of listening could be an even greater gift than her ability to speak brilliantly.
Practice is everything, whether we’re aiming to take up more—or less—space.
Over time, this shift to listening allowed her not only to know others better but also to be known. She moved in the direction of greater self-acceptance and a more balanced and accurate picture of herself.
Audrey discovered that being “ordinary” wasn’t a terrible trait but rather a centering human experience. When she spoke, she did so with more thought and consideration.
As Ram Dass has pointed out, we are human beings, not human doings. Being is very hard for some of us, and we may need to rehearse silence more than we need to practice speech. But empathic listening is active.
it was not sufficient for Cara to offer just one green light and then withdraw again.
Whatever words we use, we can extend an invitation to the people we love to tell us their stories when they are ready. If a person we love has found the courage to live through something, then we can find the courage to live through something, then we can find the courage to listen, to give our full attention, and to not back away from asking, “Is there more you haven’t told me?”
The challenge of conversation is not just in being our self but in choosing our self, since what we call the self is constantly reinvented through interactions with others. The self is always under construction.
Paradoxically, the more enduring a connection, the more vulnerable we are to getting stuck in conversations where our experience of our self and the other person becomes fixed and small.
Our conversations invent us. Through our speech and our silence, we become smaller or larger selves. Through our speech and our silence, we diminish or enhance the other person, and we narrow or expand the possibilities between us. How we use our voice determines the quality of our relationships, who we are in the world, and what the world can be and might become.
