Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Weekly I come up against a dilemma about scheduling something with a friend.  I have this lifelong habit of agreeing with the friend about a time for a movie, say, when it is actually inconvenient for me.  I go, build up a bit of resentment, but seldom am able to speak up for myself.  My inner grumbling kicks in.  My friends usually pick times and dates that really work for them, but that amount of assertiveness makes me nervous when I try it.

So I've been thinking:  what is at the bottom of this?  I have perfectly delightful friends, and all of them are able to be flexible.  Yet I somehow cannot ask that of them.  The other day, my husband was asking me where I'd lived as a child and how long in each place.  I noticed that after 5 years in one city, I next lived two years in the south, then two years in California.  And for the first time I realized fully that not only was it traumatic to have moved in my sophomore year of high school from a one building 1-12 school to a high school of 5,000, but that these early moves, when I was five, then seven, then nine, caused me to be friendless and be pretty desperate to make friends.  I had to be the flexible one, to stand out, to be so engaging that kids wanted to play with me.  It was part of my survival technique, to be accommodating.

But like a lot of old habits, it's not doing me any good now.  I need not fear rejection because I don't accept the first good date for a friend.  I can speak up and we can work out a time mutually beneficial.  My friends have mostly been friends for decades, and we've weathered disagreements, cooling off periods and great talks when we cleared up misunderstandings about who we are.  It's pretty crazy to think I need to continue to fear rejection.  For that's where it began:  in fear of not having friends or losing them.  I've been going around with a mental age of about five.  Oh, dear.

I'm going to practice being assertive more.  In a pleasant way.  I'll just say, "I could possibly do that, but it makes my day very tight, and I'd rather enjoy our time together without the stress.  Is there another time and day that would work equally well for us?"  There.  Now that wasn't so hard.  We'll see how it goes when I'm really speaking to another person.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

With some friends I attended a conference last night about breast cancer prevention.  The two women speaking were doctors and researchers from our area, and they head an organization that looks at environmental factors in developing breast cancer.  They were articulate, passionate and determined to reach as many women as possible, to warn them of dangers that might be avoided, if we knew about them.  I was struck with how noble this kind of speaking out is.  They are attempting to lessen the harming that chemicals and other controllable exposures can effect upon us. 

The evidence suggests that we are most vulnerable in the womb and as small children to harm that decades later shows up as breast cancer.  These women were speaking for the pre-verbal.  They give voice to ourselves when we are at our most fragile. 

I was amazed at how much we can do to protect ourselves.  Right speech encourages more right speech, and I will be telling my friends, family and neighbors about websites to see what chemicals in shampoos, cleaners and other products are suspicious.  There are sites to tell us about foods and work dangers and harmful foods in our diets.  Avoiding alcohol and red meat are two of the simple substances to deselect.  We can pick organic foods and not buy cans and plastics.  Being sure radiation exposure is minimal is easy enough if we can speak up and ask our doctors about risks and harms.

So at the same time these doctors were speaking, they were empowering us to speak up for ourselves.  After their presentation they took every single question in the room.  What a compassionate and generous gift to us.  And we now have tools to do our own research, and ingredients to look up and choices we can make.  It makes us grownups, not helpless victims.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

In the New York Times yesterday there was an article about the Metropolitan Opera's production of John Adams' "The Death of Klinghoffer".  People are protesting the portrayal of the terrorists on board the ship as having a sympathetic side in that particular tragic incident.  This is a huge issue of art and free speech and fairness in history.  I admit to being sympathetic to the protestors, as the event didn't happen that long ago, and people who are alive were traumatized, and an innocent man's life was destroyed.

Yet I never heard of protests about "Nixon in China" and "Dr. Atomic",  though both of those operas take liberties to discuss true events in symbolic and inaccurate ways.  Adams saw an opportunity to focus on tragedy that is modern not ancient, and in the process made us think more deeply about iconic public figures.  In the 1930's, Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein used the historical figure Susan B. Anthony to great advantage and in the process made her come alive in an all new way in their opera "The Mother of Us All". 

I'm proud of the protestors and proud of the artists.  It takes courage to revisit an event that is codified in our history and make it disturbing enough to come alive again.  I haven't seen "The Death of Klinghoffer", but I've listened to the CD.  It's serious and haunting and trusts the audience to grapple with what the ultimate meaning of the event is or was and more importantly, how each person participating feels about the subject.  We are not talking about made up, gratuitous violence here, but real actions in a real world that perhaps doesn't pause often enough to think for themselves about news.  Adams makes us work.  The reopening of a closed discussion is painful, but may ultimately be illuminating.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Right speech often is a sticky subject.  I'm grappling right now with an elephant-in-the-room situation in a group I'm in.  I want to discuss it, but others don't and feel that it might be harmful to talk about the person involved.  Since I am not queen of right speech, I  hesitate, since knowing what will be harmful, is at best, guesswork.  So I've said nothing.  I've described my concerns to my therapist, but her response has me thinking I should respond within the group as well.  Yet, while I was away the group did discuss the situation with the person involved and decided to keep the status quo.  Fine, except I feel there is danger not addressed honestly in the group. 

My heart feels wrong about this.  But I don't want to rock the boat.  This is how it feels when someone says something racist, or denigrates a person with me as a witness.  It's wrong not to speak up, but speaking up will be so painful for the person and possibly damaging to the group and our closeness over decades. 

I'm fearful.  I don't have a lot of courage.  I've done courageous acts, as have most people, but I generally don't want to stick out.  I don't welcome CHANGE.  I'd like to stick my head in the sand.  That works, unless something bad happens and I know I might have prevented it.

I'm going to grapple with this some more.  Hopefully, some wisdom will surface.  My therapist says I could quit the group and therefore not be a party to the disfunction.  That is a scary step.  It feels like judging them all.  And I love them all.  But as I describe my dilemma, I think of my Al-ANON meetings.  Am I enabling the group to remain willfully blind?  Oh, dear.  I'm waiting for more clarity, because no one else can answer what action I should take but me.  At least I'm pausing, reflecting, hearing all sides. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

In Jane Austen's novels, there is a propriety about "safe topics", usually the weather and the family's health.  Austen teases the reader with the high level of restrictions placed on people speaking in public, but look what happens when people cross the boundary:  you end up with Mrs. Bennett, who embarasses her daughters, at times even humiliating them, and in "Sense and Sensibility" the younger daughter's emotions, unchecked, expose her to ridicule and gossip.  There is grave danger in speaking in Austen's world, and though it appears to us today to be stuffy and rigid, I wonder if we have plunged too deeply into the alternative:  private thoughts and feelings made public through cell phones and a lack of manners.

Superficial manners are probably justifiably eliminated.  But what about courtesies like not interrupting, speaking respectfully to teachers, answering the elderly politely, and wishing others well when they wish you well.  Do we have to give up the rules of engagement so completely?  The exposure we see on TV with reality shows and Judge Judy and Dr. Phil are created for drama and are "shows" not reality, yet we often model them in our real lives.  In real life, people don't usually want complete honesty.  We want sensitivity to ourselves and kindness.  Bluntness hurts as much as it always did.  Yet somehow it has become cool to tear another apart, with as many witnesses as possible.

Keeping council with oneself is as wise now as it was then.  Thinking long and carefully before speaking still results in a better outcome.  In Buddhism, we talk about reactivity and response.  The first is impulsive and may lead to hurting others or shooting ourselves in the foot.  The later gives us that pause that may allow experience and consideration to inform our speaking.  Unintentional harming is less likely after a couple of deep breaths before we speak.  Do we really need to comment on another's weight, even if asked.  It's a minefield, as we know from experience.  Do we really want to slash back in anger when a friend judges us?  We may end up with an ex-friend and a lot of regret. 

You can read Miss Manners in the newspaper as I do, or pick up an Austen book to get a little perspective.  Because she skillfully shows you all the harm that speaking may entail. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Recently, I've been a witness to honesty in the medical realm.  A friend spent many weeks in ICU, and I was wowed by some of the doctors' ability to say "We don't know, we may never know" about her illness.  Younger doctors may be trained differently, and seem more comfortable being human instead of omniscient.  The doctors and bankers as gods thing is no longer the culture for most people.  Paradoxically, for me and others, the admission of not knowing all the answers makes us trust them more.  This is truth telling when anything else increases the terror.  Now, several of the friends wanted, demanded, answers or transferring the patient or consulting other doctors.  It's always worth listening to those people, because examining all the options is responsible.  But often these people are uncomfortable with uncertainty.  We all wish for certainty, but promising it is delusional.  Nothing is certain, except, as they say, death and taxes.  What this medical team did is honestly tell us they were doing everything in their power to keep her alive while she fought off the virus.  That statement told us she was in danger, that medicine could only do so much, but the team was passionate about fighting for her.  And she's home now.  If the outcome had been otherwise, there would have been a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking, guilt and agony, but us grownups know there is serendipity and luck and mystery in medicine, as in everything else.

Yesterday I went to my own doctor for knee pain.  I waited 10 days and ignored a friend's advice to go immediately because it might be a blood clot and another who thought it was a pinched nerve.  I gave it a chance to get better.  It seemed to, then felt worse.  My doctor was matter of fact.  I am getting older and there is wear and tear on the knee.  This makes sense.  She also told me I could take Tylenol and use BenGay or some other product, but they would not fix anything, just ease the symptoms.  The best thing was to lose some weight.  Ah.  Painful to hear but true.  The one real thing I can do to protect my knee is take the load off.  I appreciated her candor.  I didn't want medicines or cover ups, I wanted to hear the one helpful statement that I could really affect.  So now, I know I need to lose weight for diabetes and for my knees.  She treated me as an actor in my own life.  That's respect. 

I don't think my mother's doctors made an effort to tell her honestly what she needed to do.  She was a smoker and an alcoholic.  Her doctor might  have called up the nerve to give her the names of clinics that could help.  He needed to call my dad and urge him to get her in a program.  But nobody liked to rock the boat in the old days.  Maybe he thought it futile, but it wasn't his call to make.  It was hers.  So she died instantly of her first heart attack at 61.  She was on no medication.  We begged her to quit smoking, her grandkids begged her, but she didn't think it was our business.  I told her how worried I was about her drinking, but I was just her daughter.  She pretty much didn't listen to anything my Dad said.  So she died, and maybe she would have anyway, it was too late.  But her doctor should have cared enough to try at least once.  Right speech is not harming.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

In May, I visited the town where I lived for six years as a kid.  I'd seen some of the people since then, but not in that town.  I stayed with my friend.  Now this town is in the South, and politics and viewpoints differ but generally don't coincide with my own.  I got baited a bit for being from a liberal state and town, and was teased I was a hippie, and about the current President.  That kind of thing.  I laughed and didn't engage.  I had determined before I set out on the trip not to argue.  What is the point?  I wanted to respect them and their different environment, which has it's plusses and minuses.

I sat silent when no one had seen the movie "Lincoln".  He's not generally a hero there.  I'd kind of forgotten that.  I heard about Grant's drunkenness, as if that was the only thing he brought to the table.  I listened to a strange convoluted excuse for slavery in the South.  I did not take communion at the church where I attended a funeral, but I wasn't the only one to stay seated.

When I returned home I felt I'd stayed on the road to right speech, without straying into road rage.  I was proud of myself.  I wanted to hear what these other people had to say, not what I already knew I thought.  And yet.  A lot of talking was required to get the disturbance I felt inside out of my system.  I talked at length to friends and described what had happened.  I spent a session with my therapist.

There was a cost to all that detachment and disengagement.  I was chock full of feelings.  I was angry at some of the speech I had heard.  I really had to talk it all out later.  Maybe I was able to stay on track while away because I knew I had a safe sounding board when I returned.  I didn't live there so why upset people? 

If I had been more skillful, I might have responded in a way that didn't shut down the other person.  I did try humor whenever possible.  When they asked me if I was a Republican I replied "Absolutely" with a grin.  I said another time if a hippie was a dress code, then yes, I'd been one, but otherwise I was married with two toddlers and too busy for parties and drugs.  I didn't say I wasn't too busy to demonstrate with King and Chavez and begin a Nuclear Disarmament group.  Why go there?

The trip was a deep experience, delightful and challenging, insightful and full of friendliness and beauty.  And I'm still thinking over my behavior, not anyone else's.  So that I can become more skilled at being as honest balanced against  kind and non-harming.  And I can practice right here at home.