Say what you mean, what you say: Why Truth Bombs Bring Peace
My friend Heath Brown has a saying, “anything good is hard and takes all your time.” Maybe that’s why we dress up and water down what we say. To really speak the truth to someone, to actually be honest induces mayhem. The white lie skips us out of conflict we so desperately try to avoid. The truth will set you free but first it will piss everyone off. Lying to each other is just more convenient. Lying to ourselves is way easier than owning our failures. It’s called a truth bomb for a reason. There’s fallout, shrapnel, people get hurt. But like most uncomfortable things, there’s gold on the other side of truth induced trauma.
I’m in the middle of this war zone right now. My wife and I had some serious truths we needed to drop on each other for a few months now. I’ve stacked up my sandbag bunker in the form of working so hard I can’t think about anything else, her in the form of taking care of the kids and special projects for people capable of being pleasant. It’s easier if we both pretend there isn’t an elephant sleeping in the bed with us, but it’s not living. It’s the starvation of relationship like a goldfish we forgot about from the fair.
I’ve noticed two ways (so far) that we squirm under the truth. Me: I make up a story that blames someone else and their lack of understanding. My wife: shutdown, call in sick and hope it all blows over. When we both couldn’t take anymore of the cold war, I fired the first shot. It was a glancing blow, I knicked her shoulder. “You are basically my roommate, You couldn’t be less interested in me.”
Her response: “You are miserable to be around because you refuse to get over being fired.” We both we’re bleeding out, and we both were exactly right. What happened next was purely Corinthian. “Love Bears all Things.”
It isn’t until we both shoot each other in the face with honesty that we can get back to loving fully. Every dude idolizes a man of his word and every man hates being vulnerable.
“Why can’t men be men?” My friend Chip Morton often asks me. “Why do we posture and project to protect ourselves from being seen?” Maybe we do all this because we cant have truth without vulnerability. Maybe we fear being exposed more than we value being real. Until the pendulum swings, we’re stuck a discount version of ourselves.
Big living isn’t possible while posing. Loving people isn’t possible without truth. We have to say what we mean and mean what we say.
Struggle Well Friends