Soph--

Re: "I was taught that you must always speak truth to power ..."

I have found that truth is never wasted, and often not ignored even when there is no response or a negative response. Someone I cared about a great deal helped me with that. I had spoken much truth to deaf ears with him, or so I thought! About 6 years later, we were at the same storytelling event and he sought me out. He was Telling and I was just there to listen, and I certainly would not have presumed to go open old biz with his performance coming up. So I was really taken off guard when he approached me and said, "I'm so glad you're here, there's something I have wanted to tell you for a long time. I just wanted to tell you-- all those things you tried to help me see-- you were right. The day I could see that, my life began to change. Thank you so much."

Well of course I didn't deserve that amount of thanks, because he had done his own changing, and that had been much harder than any courage I'd had to screw up to tell him my "humble" opinion! *BG* But his thanks were so loud and clear that I was able to see something I had never considered before.

What I took away from this was that if you speak the truth in love-- including sometimes the truth that there are things you need to say or would like to say but won't until you can say them effectively-- it has a funny way of sinking in when it is needed most. It is absorbed and goes into some kind of holding place until it is just what you always wanted to hear. (Usually we forget that we had heard it before and think that it's our own brilliant courage!!!)

After my friend told me this, I thought about how I receive truth. Suddenly I had a list, as long as both arms, of people who had been perfectly right and whose truth I had not been ready to hear. And it kicked in later just like my friend described. And I hadn't even realized it, much less thanked them.

I also learned as a result of thinking about this and trying it with important truths, that our responsibility is WHAT and HOW and WHEN and WHY we tell. We must be responsible about this to any extent we can, good days and bad, doing the best we can at any given moment. But we cannot be responsible for how it will be received. We can care how people will feel and react, and be as helpful as we can, but it is really up to us each how we receive truth and WHEN we let things sink in.

And on that side we also do the best we can at all times-- at least one of you in particular has found out on one day or another that my openness to hear truth can vanish like smoke in a gale-- when I am not up to wrestling things out, the best truth I can be offered at that moment is, "I love you, I am not going away, I see that you're miserable, and we'll get to the other stuff later, and I know we'll work it through cuz we'll stick with it till it's as peaceful as we can make it, for us both."

And that is how I think of our accountability for the truth we tell. Are we willing to take care of natural the consequences of however well or poorly we told truth? Loving positivity or harsh correction, and all in between-- are we there to keep someone company while they look at the stuff that the truth has brought out into the open? Because, see, truth is never in a vacuum. It makes more truth start to flow. It's as much a process as an event, as much an expression of your valus as a value itself.

(Oh dear!! It makes me think of friends in the 70's-- you knew someone was a friend if they not only brought their stash over, but they hung around enjoying the effects with you till it mostly wore off!! I hate it when people don't do that!)

When you receive truth in love, like I described above, it becomes easier to give it. When you give truth like that it becomes easier to receive it.

Me, I been practicin'. Anyone else?

~Susan~