I guess I experienced today what Spaw and Kat said, and to be honest (!), not just as a recipient but also as a disher-outer. If we could all read minds it would be so much simpler. It would probably suck though.

A friend of mine was talking about her workplace and co-dependency one day. She said, "Well there's that handy line down the middle of the floor of the long, long hallway-- to one side for co-dependency, to the other side for health." We joked about walking around at work, demanding that people tell us whuch side they are on so we could avoid the bad side!!! She was talking about how on any given day, people she knows well might appear on either side of the line, depending how they're doing with their old baggage on that day.

It got me started thinking about a lot of other things you could put along that line, side by side. Things that might look a lot alike, but one would be a healthy thing and the other, not.

In the idiom of earlier postings here, we could put Comfort Zones on one side of the line, and Safety on the other. You could put Responsible Honesty on one side and Irresponsible Flaming on the other.

Today I was thinking about Barriers and Boundaries. (Back to comfort zones and safety zones.) One I barely see, don't want, and hope others bash right through any I have left. The other I search for and try to respect, and hope others do too.

I think one of the difficult things about honesty is that the line is seldom straight, clearcut, continuous, or even visible. It looks different from either side too. This is much more complex than simply the old joke, "I'm persistent, you're stubborn." What I find interesting is that some of the stuff on the unhealthy side of the line is often really taken as gold. It seems the two can masquerade for each other, even fooling smart and perceptive people sometimes. So along with the need for honesty is the need for discernment-- a good bullshit detector. The ability to "see" what's in the heart. Some have a lot of this gift. It makes the honesty work intensely and well.