Wahdering Along the Path: Right Speech

Brian Williams is at the center of a controversy about right speech.  He, over the years, told a story about Iraq that is untrue, and recently he got "caught" in the tall tale.  Since he's a broadcaster, everyone is up in arms about his integrity, though I think we all know that television broadcast news is not a pillar of accuracy.  These anchors are entertainers more than journalists, and what they are asked to do must compromise most journalistic standards.  Still, Williams cast himself at the center of war action, risk and imminent danger, when actually, it was the soldiers around him who risked themselves for him.  Too many movies, perhaps, or the temptation to tell a really good story led him astray. 

We know from research that the more times a story is told the less accurate it becomes, and our brains store the latest false memory as true.  So Williams is like the rest of us:  he gets further and further from the truth the more he describes the event.  I don't much care if he loses his job or not, as I never watch broadcast news anyway, but the self righteousness displayed by many seems disingenuous or hypocritical to me.  Our brains like to sit by the fireside and entertain our fellow humans.  We don't need to turn on a switch to do this, it's automatic. 

Now I understand veterans taking umbrage over this situation.  Nobody really wants to hear what they went through, but this guy gets the shock and awe response.  Real heroes don't brag.  And usually they don't talk about what happened at all.  My dad didn't talk about World War II.  He wanted to get on with his life and forget all the fear and pain and suffering.  Williams somehow hasn't understood the nature of war or the people who fight in it, and that is the tragedy.  He's failed at empathy, and a good reporter has to have that quality in spades.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Well, right speech is the weather channel, as it has just begun raining.  Boy oh boy do we need it.  I'm in a holding pattern as I am picking up my dear friend's mom from a surgical procedure sometime today.  I'm awaiting the call.  Her mom is a character.  At 92, she is feisty and stubborn, and had to be tricked into living with her daughter.  She is happy here, but will she admit it?  No way.  So the subject of going back is never broached, as she bristles at the thought.  Yet it's been over a year, and she hasn't left, and actually can't without help.  You can tell from the twinkle in her eye she's relieved and enjoys the lively activities around her.  But gratitude?  No way Jose.  She's not about to concede defeat, and everyone else avoids the topic, as it makes her so anxious.  It's as if speaking the words:  "I live with my daughter now" would be a battle lost, instead of a statement of good fortune. 

So our right speech is not to refer to the fact that she lives in California now, and to let her tell her story as she wishes.  I guess in her mind she's just visiting.  It makes her feel safer and not so dependent.  She's a tiger, and I like that about her.  I stay on safe subjects with her, such as old movies, details of my daughter's upcoming wedding, and idle chat.  But last Sunday, since the bridal shower was at her daughter's house, she got to be in the middle of the fun, and after everyone else left, my daughter opened all her presents there, because my friend's mom had voiced an opinion that seeing the gifts was half the fun.  My daughter opted not to open them while the party was going on, but she conceded the Mom's point by making sure she saw all the presents.  And there she was, right next to my daughter, having a ball.  But not saying a word to admit it.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We're all waiting for rain here.  Today's possible rain has moved forward to this evening.  We've had humidity, damp looking skies and fog.  The topic of conversation is our desperate need for rain and the anticipation.  Do we water our plants?  Is there a storm coming and we should prepare?  Should we cancel an outing or go to the movie another time?  Uncertainty, thy name is weather.

There are plenty of reasons to obsess about weather, but sometimes I think it is a code.  Our general or specific anxiety gets wrapped up in a digestible wrapper of weather.  Then we can speak our minds, our worries couched in an acceptable topic.  Uncertainty is the basis of our lives, but we seldom get comfortable with it.  Randomness is scary to us generally.  We want events to have a purpose, and we want to blame our actions or others for events that are unpleasant.  With weather as the topic, we can criticize global warming, fossil fuels, whatever we feel makes the event make sense.  I'm not saying these are not contributing factors, and we should be working to eleviate them, but let's face it, the weather is unpredictable and cyclical.  Our drought here is part of living in a mediterranean climate.  I've seen us hysterical before.  We live in a dry climate.  But we want it to have the gardens of Ireland.  No can do.

We also want to know what's ahead for us.  Well, on that front, old age, illness and death are definitely predictable.  But we don't mean that.  We don't want to prepare for such "far off" things.  We want to know about our children's and grandchildren's futures, how our investments will fare, whether we will sing well at the wedding or have people to talk to at the party we're attending.  No one can predict our little or big future, except that surprise and unexpectedness will play a major part. 

So let's talk of the coming rain or not, it will happen or it won't.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Righteousness is the enemy of my right speech.  When it rises, I know I'm being judgmental, and what follows is me posing for me.  So when someone is gossipy, or snoopy, I no longer make some statement like:  "I prefer not to talk about that" or "Let's not go there".  I just change the subject abruptly.  I'm sure people think I'm weird, but I ask them something about themselves, and usually that is irresistable.  I do not get on my high horse, or even on my pony.

Last night I did it so quickly I think the other person didn't notice.  I'm thinking:  I'm not going to jump in that pool, and then I switched to a question about a visit she'd had, and then we got on recipes.  Now, food is always a good subject.  I also ask about the kids, how a volunteer job is going, that kind of thing.  But what I am really doing is avoiding temptation.  I like to gossip as much as the next gal, and I was raised by a master, my mother.  It's quicksand for me.  So I'm not judging the other person, but rather guiding myself to the far shore.  What happens when I indulge?  I feel terrible later.  This I know.  I have regrets.  I look in the mirror and don't like myself.

Not to say I don't listen to a friend's fears and anxieties.  I just don't analyze so much any more.  I miss it, because while I'm doing it, it makes me feel superior, but then it feels crappy.  After all the years of analyzing literature as a professor, I miss taking texts apart.  But a person is not a book, and I am definitely not a reader.  My new mantra is that people are too complex, and simplifying is insulting.  Summation is idiotic, when it comes to other people.  Now I prefer to admire how a person can be many contradictory things and is also constantly changing.  So I'd rather give an appreciation of another person, not a reduction.  I'm on safer ground.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We had a little incident here in a local cafe where an interracial couple ate breakfast together, then later the husband who is black, stopped by as his wife and three friends were having lunch at the same cafe, and the waitress tapped on the window and told him to scram, evidently thinking he was pandhandling.  The guy was deeply upset, as he had every right to be, the waitress was fired, and our little pocket of the woods is in an uproar.  The waitress didn't have much speech, one word, but it was enough to cause a hellaballou. 

This event is a good example of impulsive judgment arising before all the facts are in.  She stepped in when no one had requested she do so.  She was minding someone else's mindstream, and reading it very, very wrongly.  Because she acted impulsively instead of responsively, all her prejudices and preconceptions arose to choke her.  She probably thought she was being proactive, but she was in the wrong town in the wrong era.  She might have made a lot of tips in Selma, Alabama in the sixties.

This extreme case reminds me that great harm can be done with one unthinking impulsive action.  The waitress lost her job.  The black man and his family were shocked and hurt, and the surrounding community has been forced to face racism in a place where it seldom shows itself so nakedly. 

Pausing might have saved the day.  Not doing what hadn't been requested would have helped.  Making assumptions revealed a prejudice that possibly the waitress didn't even know she possessed.  She learned something about herself, and she may be wiser now.  But the family has been rendered feeling unsafe and their world is askew.  The one word hurt them and changed their lives.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday, at my daughter's bridal shower, we sat in a circle and spoke about our parents' weddings:  what we had been told and how we felt about the story.  It was a lovely moment of right speech, with everyone listening intently to each story, and marveling at the variety and circumstances of each.  For some of us my age, our parents married in wartime, and that seems strange to us now.  For my daughter's friends, some of them knew a great deal about the wedding, some very little.  I wonder if it will spur them on to asking details while their parents are still alive.  I wish I'd asked questions of my parents.  Did my mother have a coursage?  It's not in the photo.  Were they married in the midwest by their families or on the border where my father was stationed?  Did any family attend?  Did they get any honeymoon?  I have a couple of aunts and uncles I could ask. 

What does it mean to speak of the origin of your family?  Why are these stories important?  We sense the import, but maybe cannot articulate it.  One of my friends has already written about how much it meant to her to speak about her parents and hear others.  She's gone on to write about it at some length.  I hope she saves it for her two daughters, because they will want to know, either now or as they grow older.  It's wonderful to have a record of life's markers.  Our stories are what we pass down and they keep us alive in memory.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Today is my daughter's bridal shower, hosted by a dear friend of mine.  It's a day for gratitude and the expression of it.  I'm grateful for every participant, who will be making this afternoon special for my daughter.  I'm grateful for my daughter, who is so special to me.  My friend is making all this possible, and it yokes me to to her more deeply.  And there will be several women there who are the age my mother would be, so that makes me feel her presence and the generational nature of this ritual.  I trust in the many kind words that will be spoken.  One of the activities we're going to do is describe what we know of our parents' wedding day.

I know it was wartime.  I know my parents met when my mother was 15 and my father nineteen.  My dad was cutting bolts of cloth at a pants factory and my mother was a seamstress, working along side her older sister.  So they were employees, then friends.  My mother lost her beau during the war, as he was a pilot killed in action.  My father became an army pilot and was stationed at the border.  They fell in love, married, and had me right at the end of the war.  In their wedding picture, my dad is in his uniform and my mom in a dark suit with a crisp white blouse.  They were poor, but staking their lives that they had a future.  Probably all they spent on the wedding was her coursage and the photo.  Their marriage spoke hope and future and love against the terror of war.  They did what so many did:  they chose life.

And now my daughter is choosing life and future and marriage and kids.  She is affirming the joy of living, and we are all witnesses to her choice.