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I have read, “Honesty without compassion is brutality”. My ideas is that balance even balances out honesty. The need to say, “Just being honest”, towards others seems to me to need to me in balance as well. Does that make any sense? I wonder how often my truth is that I am out of balance when I am supposedly being “honest”. Even when sharing positive things like the use of my stove. The honesty of the not having use of a stove seemed to me, recently, to be disturbing to others. I meant it to be a celebratory thing, but is pointed out a serious lack of balance in self-care and was perhaps a bit TOO honest at the time of the sharing. I think that the timing of “honesty” is important and I’m pretty sure I miss this one all the time. But I am making headway through the Grace of others.
Another thing about honesty that am questioning is the need to balance it with just pain shutting up, thinking of possible ramifications, or simply adding burden to the emotional environment around me. Sometimes I think that even the good things can be upsetting to those around me because it raises their awareness to lacking around them, lacking to someone they care about, and may even poke at their own judgement. I’m coming to realize most people really do think the best of those around them, and it seems that if what they thought turns out to be wrong, then it casts doubt on themselves. Certain kinds of doubts about those around you can unravel the emotional fabric that is generally there as a protectant. Good will, inclusiveness simply by association, purposeful commendatory, even the often quoted, “it is what it is”; for me, keeps me in the fold, in the circle of trust, in the social group, in the herd. My honesty at times risks this.
I think some of the words I need to think on to balance this honesty out are: “the work”, certainly “recovery”, “self-accountability”, “productive shame”, grief, motivation, and perhaps “gumption”. I need to rally for myself. I need to shut up and get to work diligently to push myself forward, up and out of my lackings. I feel like it isn’t to others that the honesty needs to be voiced, but to myself. I honestly need to pull myself out of a life-time of indecision, poor choices, financial irresponsibility, and tolerating deprivation, crumbs, neglect, and dismissiveness form others and my own self.
I feel like I need to embrace my shame, my lackings, my shortcomings, and the things I grieve privately. My privacy needs to increase and perhaps my honesty needs to decrease. I feel like I need to remember to be within as much as without, to continue to tend to my insides as I develop momentum working on my outsides, and to balance what I share with why I need to share it in the first place. I am seeing that I need to balance the sharing of my recent accomplishments with the concern for others’ concern that any of these accomplishments were needed in the first place. Maybe a healthy dose of embarrassment would be a good thing. Perhaps really FEELING the grief that resides within me, over a poorly managed life, would be beneficial. When I encounter a flash of shock on someone’s face, a drop in their demeanor, a pause in the conversation, a kind of psychological sigh, and often a collective glancing about for help and some silence; perhaps I can learn to take the cue that this honesty was inappropriate and out of balance.
It is hard because they are often joyful shares for me. They are often wins over other things, skills learned, physical improvements to make my life easier, and these day, opens the door for social improvements. I would make me sad to be dampened by my good news honesty shares, but the truth is; I can barely believe all the missed memos growing up that would have taken care of these needs and the social rules of sharing that would have gone with them. Now that Balance is my third core value, maybe now I can begin to fill in the blacks and do a better job throughout most of the areas of my life.
I am glad I took the time to write today. I am out of balance in my writing. Thanks for the visit and thank you WP.
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