Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday, an aqaintance characterized a friend as having been, during her illness, miraculously "patient".  My hackles went up, and I replied that last week such was not the case.  Last week she was claustrphobic and frightened and demanding, finally realizing how long her recovery was going to take before she could go home.  This week, yes.  She's more resigned, more rational, and more determined to work hard to get home.  And these are, of course, generalizations at best.

I've been thinking about why I had such a reaction, and why I didn't just go with the flow and let our friend be praised?  It sounds petty and ungenerous, and I'm examining myself for signs of such feelings which I can have as well as the next fellow.

But part of my response was labeling other people, complex people, with simple virtuous or unvirtuous qualities.  Why?  Because we have the tendency to make the story simple.  We talk about either the ups or the downs, when both are present.  I've had to listen to a lot of visitors' hyperbole, sitting with my sick friend, and I wonder if it doesn't have the opposite of the intended effect:  discouragement instead of encouragement, because the person recognizes the conflict inside, and the visitor wants the story to be heroic.  In fact, every story is so complex language cannot describe it, but, at least, if we show that all feelings are okay, normal and human, the person receives a kind of ease that is comforting.

So if we say, not "How patient you are!" with a tone of admiration, but "Wow, it must be tough to have to wait so long to get to (fill in the blank), we open up the floor to their description of their experience, instead of closing the door to honesty.  Do we have a real authentic moment of communication or do we close off complaints, fears, anxieties?

Yes, I know what the social rules are.  But those rules sometimes distance us from each other, and make our interactions false.  I'm struggling to be authentic while not harming the other, and hold myself to a high standard of right speech.  If I had the conversation to do all over again, I'd  handle it more skillfully, and perhaps explain myself better.  But I'd honor my sick friend by noting how challenging it is to be in her situation, and that naturally, her feelings and thoughts are in some turmoil.  Don't hold her to an unfair standard.  Appreciate her humanness.